


A.K.A Lion Hearted Kitten

by ship_to_wreck



Category: Daredevil (TV), Jessica Jones (TV), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Defenders (Marvel TV)
Genre: Canon Compliant, Canon-Typical Violence, F/F, F/M, Jessica's POV, but jess is a stubborn little shit so fair warning, matt and jess are perfect saltmates, some implied romantic feelings, there's a lot of banter in this fic and I'm not even sorry
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-24
Updated: 2019-01-08
Packaged: 2019-07-25 03:36:35
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 37,620
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16189256
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ship_to_wreck/pseuds/ship_to_wreck
Summary: So Daredevil is back from the dead and there’s a new vigilante in Hell’s Kitchen, and Jessica has been trying to figure out who she is—Cat from Hell or whatever they’re calling her this week.Working with the pair of them, however, was never exactly part of Jessica’s plans.





	1. Part 1

**Author's Note:**

> So, the idea for this fic came to me shortly after I finished season 2 of Jessica Jones, but I had to put it on hold because my real life has been insane (depression and anxiety are creativity killers, aren't they?). But I needed to not be in my head for a while, so I decided to focus on Jessica's life instead (which is messier than my own lmao). I haven't written anything in over a year, and I think I'm a little rusty, but I had fun writing this fic (especially the JessMatt bits, I love my children so much). This fic is complete, I've already written all four parts of it, I just have to revise everything, hence why I split it into four chapters.
> 
> And now, without further ado, let's go to what really matters lol
> 
> I took this plot directly from the _Alias_ comics, but I changed the story quite a bit, of course, and added some twists to make it fit the show universe better. The focus is on Jessica/Trish and their relationship but Matt helps a lot, and Luke pops up too at some point. Spoilers for all of Jessica Jones/Luke Cage. DD3 is safe since this fic was written before the show came out. Also, for the record, I do not ship Jess/Oscar, but they're in Jess's life now, so I included a couple of scenes with them.
> 
>  **Warnings for:** Alcohol and drug abuse, PTSD mention, language, canon-typical violence, physical abuse. 
> 
> I hope you guys like it :D

The whole thing started when Daredevil came back to life.  
  
Well, not exactly at the same time, but shortly after. A few weeks after all the shit with Fisk had blown up in everybody's faces (again), and The Devil Boy had appeared out of a cloud of smoke, or a pool of blood, or both, and saved the day (again). Or so Jessica had heard. She didn't go around looking for problems to fix (could barely fix her own when they inevitably found her), but cheap bars and dark alleys usually told a lot of stories, and while some of them were just a bunch of stinky crap people liked to toss around, some others happened to be legit. Luckily for her, Jessica was good at finding out the truth.

This time, all it took was a night out to see him herself (and take pictures, and then delete them, because it was none of her business). Because _of course_ he would come back at some point. Maybe hadn't even been dead, to begin with. Had probably got out of that hole before the entire building collapsed on top of him. _Definitely_ had. The bright side of having seen so much bullshit is that nothing surprised her anymore.  
  
Which was why when the new rumors began circulating Hell's Kitchen, Jess didn't even question how real it was, she was just intrigued and, above all, freaking annoyed.  
  
Because the last thing she, or anyone else, needed was to have yet another super powered person on the loose.  
  
She first heard about it one night at a random, filthy bar somewhere in the Kitchen. She was only on her third glass of whiskey, just getting started, when a group of men gathered around a table near the counter started talking about something that was actually worth hearing.  
  
"I'm just saying I've seen some weird shit lately, especially around these blocks," one of them, the younger-looking one, said. He sniffed, took a gulp of his beer. ( _Beer_. Amateurs.) "Like real skinny boys fighting real big ones. Shit like that."  
  
"Yeah?" the blonde one said in a mocking tone. "Did he wear a red costume? Did he throw webs, too?"  
  
The other three men laughed, but the one who had spoken first, the younger one, was not laughing. He was shaking his head, looking pissed. Hands closed into fists.  
  
Jess ordered another shot. It was getting chilly outside and she had left her scarf home and God damn her tendency to make bad decisions.  
  
"I'm telling you, I've seen all kinds of fucked up shit. Just the other day, this woman showed up out of nowhere and beat the shit out of two dudes harassing this schoolgirl. Insane shit."  
  
Jessica downed her glass of whiskey. Slammed the thing against the counter. It didn't break or crack, but Josie looked at her like she had slapped her child or something. Jess lifted her glass for a refill while the dudes kept talking.  
  
"A woman? What woman?" The older one asked.  
  
"I don't know, man. She wore a costume and all. Face half covered. She fought like a goddamn ninja."  
  
The older one huffed dismissively. "Dude, stop dwelling on this bullshit."  
  
But Jessica didn't. Because she had learned after the third or millionth mistake not to take that kind of shit for granted. Had learned to give the crazy ones the benefit of the doubt. If someone told her right now they had seen a unicorn  on fire crossing the sky she would look that shit up just to be sure. Just to be prepared when all that crap eventually hit the fan.  
  
And people had been talking about this new person. Not too much, but enough to draw her attention to the matter. Enough to make her grab a slice of pizza and a can of Red Bull and sit on the couch with her computer on her knees and do some research. She typed all the possible different combinations of the sentence _‘Mystery Woman Leaps Off Buildings and Beats People’_ and she looked up all the sources, but there was no video or useful picture. There were, however, several posts about it on different social medias (many tweets under the tag #CatWoman, and even a few fanarts on Tumblr). People were already coming up with cutesy names for her. Cat from Hell being the most used one, the one that stuck.

Now, truthfully, Jessica wouldn't have cared this much, wouldn't have bothered to type that in the search bar and scroll through dumb comments, if something didn't feel out of place. But her stomach had been doing this stupid shit whenever she heard anything remotely related to this topic. Like it was tying itself into knots, pushing all the booze back up until she was nauseated enough to gag, but not too much to vomit.  
  
And because of that, she couldn't let this shit go.  
  
So she looked into it. Better cross this thing off her to do list before it became the _only_ thing on that list. She started by trying to draw a map of all the places where Cat From Hell—she really needed to come up with a name for this person herself; that shit was too fucking long—had appeared in the past two weeks, aiming to find the most popular spot, but there wasn't one. She had been _everywhere_. From Brooklyn, to Queens, to Hell's Kitchen. Smart kitty. She knew not to stick around for too long if she didn't want people to start recognizing her and pointing fingers. (There had been an increase in Jessica's alcohol consumption lately because of that).  
  
Jess would have to do this the hard way.  
  
With the map in hand, Jess threw her bag over her shoulder and walked out into the streets. She lurked around for several days—or rather several _nights_ —waiting to take a picture. Jessica found three new bars with solid pours and free food, a filthy but cheap liquor store in Brooklyn, and an illegal porn shop hidden in the underbelly of the neighborhood, but she was out of luck on this one, apparently. Either that or Cat from Hell had been actively hiding from her.

(A flash of purple behind her eyelids.

 _Oh, come on, Jessica! Not everyone is out to get you._ )

Jessica would have to do it the _harder_ way.

There were always four types of people working together when shit blew up; the ones getting hurt, the ones watching, and the ones setting the bombs. Tonight, Jessica was after the rats in the sewer, the ones who knew too much and spoke too little. She showed the blurry pictures around, asked questions. Offered free-sub coupons in exchange for information. Some people spoke to her, some didn’t. Most of them didn’t. Homeless people knew how to survive in the streets, they knew the mantra—the less you know the safer you are.

It was half past three in the morning. Clouds of smoke were puffing out of Jess's mouth when she breathed and _goddamnit_ , she should have brought her scarf.

“Jessica Jones?”

People had been saying her name so much lately she was contemplating changing it to Melvin.

Jess stopped looking for new people to bribe and turned around, spotting a woman in a long coat and heels and bright red lipstick, the kind of clothes that said _‘I’m NOT From Around Here’_ in neon. She looked small, though. The shrinking that happens when life hits you too hard and it gets difficult  for you to stand tall.

“Yeah?” Jess said, brushing her hair out of her face.  

The woman smiled apologetically, her gloved hands linking together in front of her chest.

“Sorry. I work at the shelter behind the church.” She pointed with one finger at the church that stood huge behind them. Not many people prayed nowadays so the place looked old and abandoned.

The woman continued:

“I heard that you’ve been asking questions that nobody is willing to answer…” she trailed off, kicking the asphalt with the heels of her boots. “Maybe I could help.”

Jessica narrowed her eyes. “Sorry, who are you?”

“Oh, right,” she smiled again, uncomfortably. She was not used to this; to talking. Jess could relate. “I’m Margo Franklin.”

That didn’t change a fucking thing, Jessica thought. “Right.” Jess stuffed her hands into her pockets. She hadn't bothered to patch up the bullet hole in her coat, had kind of forgotten it was there, and now the wind was sneaking through it, causing her to shiver. Audrey Eastman owed her a check, by the way. “You said you can help. With what exactly?”

“I know about the kids with peculiar… skills. Some of them have gone missing, others are just confused and aggressive.” When Jessica remained silent, Margo said, “You’re not here because of that?”

Jessica’s bag was suddenly too heavy on her shoulder. She shifted her weight to the other leg. “I’ve heard rumors.”

Margo nodded. “Well, they’re true. But the kids from around here can’t afford it. Shit’s too expensive. It's like the new hot trend. Getting some temporary powers."

There was an odd sensation on Jessica’s tongue. Like sand. “People are paying for this?”

Margo’s brow furrowed. “Yeah. It's a new type of drug apparently. Or so I've heard. They call it MGH, I think.” She pursed her lips. "Can you believe it? A drug that grants people powers?"

Jess's goddamn stomach was doing that stupid shit again. "Yeah. Actually, I can.""It's fucked up." Margo sniffed, rubbing her nose with the back of her hand. "And it’s spreading.” Spreading. Like a disease. A goddamn epidemic. Jessica found it appropriate.

"How do you know all this shit?" Jessica asked, because trust was something she didn't give away easily.

“Like I said, I work at the shelter. Lots of regulars around there. They talk, I listen.”

Jessica raised an eyebrow. “And?”

Margo stood still for a solid minute. “You’re really good at this, aren’t you?”

Jessica smiled cynically. “Yeah. So cut the shit and spill it out, Franklin.”

Margo breathed in so deeply Jess was worried she might stop breathing altogether. “My sister. Name’s Mattie Franklin. She’s one of the kids who got involved in this shit. I think. I suspect. I want to be sure, and I want you find it out for me.” She paused shortly. “Please.”

Jessica said nothing. She was still stuck on the MGH thing. Too fucking close to IGH. Too fucking close to _a lot of things_. She suddenly couldn’t feel the tips of her fingers.

Margo was still speaking on the other end of a very long tunnel. It was hard to listen. “Sorry. I’ll hire you, officially. Don’t worry. It’s just that… I've put this off for too long. But you showed up here tonight, so... I guess it’s a sign or something…”

Or maybe it was just Jessica’s crap-ass luck and terrible timing.

"This new vigilante persona…” Jessica spat all of a sudden, needing to change the topic, change the focus, “is there a chance she might be one of those kids?"

Margo frowned. "The Cat from Hell?"  
  
"Yeah, that one."  
  
Margo shook her head, her short hair falling over her eyes. "No. She knows what she's doing, I guess. The younger ones don't."  
  
Something stirred in Jessica's guts. "Have you seen her?"  
  
Margo laughed a breathy, raspy laugh. "Has anyone?" she joked. Jess narrowed her eyes. "I mean, we've heard about her, and some people claim they've seen her, but there's no evidence, except for blurry pictures here and there."  
  
"Hmm.. That much I know."  
  
Margo’s face became serious. "Are you trying to find out who she is?"  
  
Jessica's eyebrows knitted together. "That's... none of your business.”

“Well, I can’t help you with _that_.” She paused. “But will you help me, and my sister? Please, Miss Jones.”

And just like that, Jessica had two cases to solve.

 

 

* * *

 

 

Dealing with Mattie Franklin and whatever hell she had managed to fall into should not be hard, Jessica decided after doing the first investigations on the case. Her sister had given enough information for Jessica to start with. Age, school, general info about family, and job.  
  
("She works at El Matador."  
  
Jessica had looked up from the contract she was clipping together, eyebrows raised. "As in the club?"  
  
"The bar, yeah." Margo rolled her eyes in an almost too miserable way. "I didn't want her to work there but... she's 21, so there wasn't much I could do."  
  
Jessica had eyed her half empty whiskey bottle, sucked her bottom lip between her teeth. "Siblings can be a handful."  
  
"You have any?"  
  
Her stomach had dropped to the floor and she had stepped on it, kicked it hard, and watched it crash against the wall. "Had."  
  
Margo was smart enough to shut up after that.)

After Margo left, Jessica had spent a solid hour digging deep into Mattie's social media accounts. Thankfully, she wasn't into it as much as most teenagers and young adults. Jessica found an abandoned Twitter account, last post from two years ago (a random tweet about music healing souls or whatever), and an Instagram account. Last post was dated a year ago, and there wasn’t much to look at. Many pictures of her three cats, a few pictures of food, none of friends or family, and a total of five selfies out of 135 pictures. Low self-esteem or too many jerks commenting on her pictures, maybe. Either way, there was nothing on her accounts that could help Jessica in any way.

Jess decided to stop by El Matador that night and observe Mattie from afar, see what she could find. That should be simple. Not much else to do until then. 

So she focused on the other problem at hand. Cat from Hell or whatever they were calling her now. Jess was starting to find the name fitting, because she sure was a hell to track down.  
  
(Perhaps she _wasn't_ hard to track at all, and Jess had been right all along, but for the first time in her life she wished she was wrong. Wished she had never seen this goddamn person before. Wished the clues pointing her to one single possibility were all misleading. Maybe it was just her paranoia. Her goddamn brain coming up with new ways to mess with her. Maybe. Maybe.)  
  
But she wanted to _know._  
  
There was only one person who knew these streets better than her. Only one person who saw, or rather _heard_ , more shit than she did. And desperate moments called for desperate measures, so Jess found herself in an alley, looking up at the buildings, searching for something moving in the shadows. She used her camera to zoom in on the rooftops, ignoring the fact that she had tripped over trash cans twice already and got a new rip in her jeans.  
  
The night was too dark, the moon hidden between thick grey clouds. But she still managed to find what she was looking for. On the same rooftop she had spotted him before. Dumbshit. Some people just made her job easier.  
  
She shoved her camera into her bag and took off, landing rather harshly on the rooftop, the sole of her feet prickling inside her boots. He was crunched down on the ledge, his arm resting on his knee. The suit was gone (no red spanx or horns this time). Instead he wore an all-black outfit with a piece of cloth wrapped around his head. Jess didn’t know which costume was worse.  
  
He tipped his head to one side like a dog, his chin up, looking at her over his shoulder. Well, not _looking_ looking. Probably just... sensing her or whatever was it that he did. "Hi, Jessica."  
  
He sounded more alive than he looked in the darkness. He sounded like she remembered rather than a new, zombie-like, brainwashed version of someone she once met. It silenced the alarms in her head that kept doubting reality and bringing up unnecessary questions. He _had_ survived, somehow. If anything, he seemed _better_. The asshole.  
  
She breathed in the cool winter air. It burned her nostrils all the way up. "How was hell?"  
  
His lips twitched. Or maybe it was only the shadow cast on his face. "Hell is just another name for Earth."  
  
Jessica narrowed her eyes, brow creasing. Goddamn near death experience had granted him some poetic skills, apparently. "I figured."  
  
She blew air out of her mouth, looked around as if someone could possibly hear them up here. "So, you've been back for a while," she started, her left foot tapping impatiently against the ground. "Have you heard anything about the shit that's been going on around here?"  
  
Murdock tilted his head again, and she wished she could see if he was frowning. She hated this mask thing. Made reading people slightly more difficult. Plus she couldn't exactly take him seriously with that shit covering his face.  
  
The line of his lips became sharp, though. "You mean the drugs."  
  
That wasn't a question. Jessica nodded just for the sake of it. "So you heard." She paused. "You’re looking into that?"  
  
His profile didn't move. "I thought _you_ were."  
  
Jesus. He really... heard _everything_ didn't he?  
  
Jessica sighed. "I am."  
  
An ambulance drove past the building far below them in the streets. Murdock turned his attention to that for a full minute, moving his head around in what Jess assumed was the equivalent of trying to get the best signal on your phone. Then the noise faded away, and he tilted his head towards her again. "Heart attack. 62 year old Mexican lady."  
  
"All right." She really did not want to know. "How about the new vigilante persona. Have you heard about her?"  
  
He looked sort of amused, judging from the very little she could see of his face. "I've heard _her_."  
  
Jessica rolled her eyes this time. "Yeah, I bet she's your type. Should we be worried?"  
  
"What do you mean?"  
  
Jess scoffed. "Come on. Chick in an spandex suit, face half covered, fights like a ninja... sounds disturbingly familiar."  
  
He fell silent for a moment. This time, Jess was glad she couldn't see his eyes.  
  
"It's not _her_."  
  
She worked her jaw. Swallowed. Her tongue heavy in her mouth. "Do we know her?"  
  
" _I_ don't know her."  
  
"That's not an answer."  
  
He wet his lips. "It's not my place to reveal her identity."  
  
The noise that left Jess’s throat was half a snort and half a groan. "What’s this, some kind of Masked Bros 101 I'm not aware of?"  
  
He had the nerve to smile. "Something like that."  
  
"You've got to be shitting me."  
  
He moved ever so slightly, like a cat who had just spotted its perfect prey. Then his shoulders relaxed again. "She seems to be doing fine so far."  
  
"Yeah, _so far_. Until she fucks it up, and we both know it's bound to happen." She couldn't keep the venom from bleeding into her voice, her muscles tensing up all of a sudden.  
  
She hated this part of the job. The part where it got too personal. Too close to her goddamn horror house. Freaking déjà vu bullshit. Hellish flashback loop bullshit.  
  
Murdock nodded, his hands touching the ground. He looked like a goddamn frog in a devil costume now. "It doesn't happen to everyone."  
  
"Yeah, just to the lucky ones." And they were both lucky, she thought. Maybe that was why he laughed lamely through his nose.

She breathed out. Sharply. Gravity and the thin air making it hard for her to breathe. "About the kids... is there anything I could use?"  
  
He shook his head, finally standing up and turning to face her. "Nothing that you don't already know."  
  
"Great. Thanks for nothing." She turned around to leave, but on a second thought, she added, "And by the way, this thing doesn't look any less ridiculous than the previous one."  
  
She heard him chuckle as she jumped off the roof.  
  
_Asshole_ .

 

 

* * *

 

 

Oscar brought the subject up once, in one of those nights where she'd bring her laptop with her and stick around for a little longer after dinner, drinking wine and doing some digging on the internet. It had been happening more often, Jessica believed. Not that she was giving much attention to the matter. But she liked the background noise. (Oscar doing the dishes, Vido talking about something Jess was only partially listening, Oscar laughing at whatever Vido had said, Oscar humming absentmindedly while he cooked.) It distracted her from the deafening silence in her apartment, and the quiet whispers in the  back of her head, never too loud to become a full-blown hallucination, but still persistent enough to drive her mad.  
  
(— _Oh, but honey, ain't we got fun_ —  
  
_Come on, Jessica. Sing for me._ )  
  
"Why are you so obsessed with this woman?" Oscar asked, a kitchen towel thrown over his shoulder, and a smile on his face.  
  
She was getting used to that, to the smile, and the way he let it spread easily across his lips.  
  
Jess frowned at his question. "I'm not... _obsessed_ ."  
  
"No?" Oscar quipped, his voice adopting an amused tone. He did that a lot. "You've been trying to figure out who she is for a couple of months. It's gotten worse in the last few weeks."  
  
Jessica twisted her eyebrows. "Well, things didn't exactly turn out fine with the last three super powered people I've met, so I just want  to know who I'm up against."  
  
"How do you know she's up against you?" he asked, returning his attention to the plates in the sink. "Maybe you're on the same side."  
  
Jessica snorted. "You’re clearly new to this.”

Because she had been doing this long enough to know how messed up things could get when someone was faced with a new moral quandary. What solutions could surface in the mind of someone who was lost or losing it.

Like killing someone and making it look like a suicide just to avoid going to prison, for example. Or helping a convicted murder escape the country just because she happened to be your godforsaken mother. Or...  
  
( _The police would have shot you both. I had to save you. Jess!_ )

Jessica did not remember getting up or taking a few steps backwards, only realized she had when she hit the wall behind her, her lungs rejecting the thin air she was precariously inhaling.

"Shit."  
  
Oscar turned around, his eyebrows knitting together. "What?"  
  
"He's asleep, he didn't hear that," Jessica retorted, her voice steady despite the fact that all of her nerves were having a stroke.  
  
Oscar's features softened again. "I meant what's wrong."  
  
Jess shook her head lightly. "Nothing. It's, uh, later than I thought," she said grabbing her laptop from the table. "I gotta go finish this goddamn case."  
  
"The Cat from Hell one, or the mysterious drug one?" He was smirking. Jessica really hated that it didn't bother her.  
  
She shrugged, her heart thumping in her ears. "Don't know yet. I'll decide when I get there."

Back in her apartment, she filled her water bottle with whiskey and stuffed it inside her bag along with some snacks.

This night was gonna be a long one.

 

 

* * *

 

 

El Matador was situated in a narrow, filthy street, away from any decent place but near a handful of other bars and a strip club, which Jessica knew was illegal because she had had to threaten the owner a couple years ago, back when she still took cases from Hogarth. That place was bad shit, even for her. Used condoms scattered around on the ground, dried drops of blood here and there, broken bottles of beer and vodka in the corners of the alley, and—that goddamn smell of piss.  
  
Jessica settled on top of a building, a strategic place that gave her full view of both the front and back doors of El Matador, as well as other two bars. She leaned against the water tank, pulled out her camera and her booze, and waited. The plan was to observe Mattie from afar, see if she'd leave the bar alone, take as many pictures of her as Jess could manage, and find something suspicious—if she were lucky. If that didn't work out, she'd follow Mattie and do all that interrogation shit.  
  
She was really counting on option number one tonight.  
  
So, obviously, things would go the opposite way. Positive thinking be damned. When you're climbing a hill you should be prepared for the fall and all the rocks on the way down.  
  
Reason why when Mattie stormed out of the club followed by not only one but two men  (they were too tall and muscly, like Luke) in leather jackets and black hoodies, Jess already had her camera prepared to snap pictures of the bastards.  
  
They were arguing, the three of them gesturing widely and frantically, and for a split second, Jessica wished she could do that _'hearing from miles away'_ thing. But then the two Bozos pressed Mattie up against the wall, towering over her, and she yelled so loud that the wish passed instantly. One of them pulled a syringe out of his pocket. Jessica’s camera clicked once, twice, thrice.

  
"Stay the hell away from me!" Mattie shouted, squirming in the guy's grip, trying to free herself.  
  
"God damn it," Jess said, voice low, shoving her camera into her bag. It was when reached the edge of the rooftop, prepared to jump, that she heard a fourth voice coming from somewhere in the alley.

And then.

 _Then_ , finally, there she was in all her shady glory and... stupid spandex suit and a scarf wrapped around her neck and pulled up to her nose and— _Jesus_ . Was that thing on her head supposed to be ears? _Cat ears_? Or—no, a beanie, or a hat, or whatever those were called, but the top did look like cat ears anyway.

"You've got to be shitting me."  
  
Not that Jessica had much time to be annoyed by _that_ because Hell Girl was fighting, moving her limbs around with precision, like she knew very well what she was doing, like she had _trained_ for that moment, and— _fuck_ .  
  
Jessica knew that fighting style. Had seen it many times before. Had been on the receiving end of that _'grab you by your shirt and flip you to the ground'_ thing once. Jess knew what it was called because _she_ had told her, in what felt like a lifetime ago.  
  
Krav Maga.  
  
" _Shit_ ," Jessica spat, in response to what she was seeing but also to the fact that it was hard to breathe again. Her body breaking out into a cold sweat, her blood pounding in her ears and-- she couldn't exactly deal with this thing right now.  
  
Especially not when Mattie was taking off, seizing the opportunity to run away from the bastards and their syringe.  
  
"Mother of... goddamn... shit."  
  
Jessica basically launched herself off the roof, landing heavily on the floor—her knee protested the impact, giving out for a solid second before she got her shit together and started running after Mattie.  
  
And, _what the hell_ , Mattie was _fast_. Faster than the average person for sure. Jessica could run a mile in under four minutes, she'd say Mattie could do it in three, or maybe less, considering the distance between them. Lots of lab rats turning into lab bunnies, apparently.

Climbing a tall metal fence was also not a problem for Mattie (she did it so effortlessly Jess would have felt frustrated if she didn't have the ability to jump over the thing and save her breath). Jess tried her best to catch up, but before she had the time to process where they were going, Mattie disappeared into a warehouse, which sat dully on this dead-end street.

Mattie left the door ajar, so for once Jess didn’t have to force her way in. She slipped inside, cautiously, debating whether she should use her lantern to see where she was going or simply follow her gut instincts.

Something moved somewhere to her left. Jessica swallowed. "Mattie?" she called out, taking small steps forward. "You clearly think I'm gonna do something to you. I'm not." Nothing. Jess could only hear her own breathing. "I won't hurt you. I just want to talk."  
  
She heard something then; feet shuffling against the ground. She paused. Waited. Counted up to five. "Okay, I'll start. I think someone did something to you, and you're trying to get rid of them. Maybe I can help you, if you talk to me."  
  
The sound of steps was louder now, clearer. Mattie was no longer hiding. She appeared in front of Jessica, but far enough that if she decided to run away, Jess wouldn't be able to get a hold of her, even if she leaped forward.

She was not coming with Jessica, that much was clear.

It was then that Jessica noted something coming out of her nose; dark, dense. She squinted in the dark, the moonlight illuminating the warehouse faintly.

Blood.

"Mattie..." she started, but before she could say anything else, Mattie cut in,  
  
"You can't help me."  
  
Then, faster than Jess's brain could process the information, she pulled a gun out of her pocket and pressed it into her own jaw.  
  
Something cold and painful rushed over Jessica's body. "No!" she shouted, her nerves somehow simultaneously on alert and completely paralyzed.

She heard rather than saw the moment Mattie pulled the trigger.  
  
For a solid minute, or maybe two, Jessica’s mind went blank, incapable of processing a damn thing.  
  
_(She blinked and suddenly and all she could see was Hope, with her throat slit open, warm crimson soaking Jessica’s jeans._

_“Hope, why would you do that?”_

_“You can kill him now. Tell me. Tell me!”)_

There was a ringing in Jessica's ears, like an alarm, but she still managed to hear something else over that. Someone else moving, running. _Trish_ , Jess presumed. Not that it mattered too much, because the sound faded within seconds, leaving Jessica alone again.

Mattie's brains were all over the floor and Jess could perfectly pinpoint the moment it surged in her chest, shaking her insides ruthlessly—the shame. She let it spread and reach every corner of her being, and then she shattered it, picked up the tiny pieces and stuffed them into her Well of Regrets somewhere in her mind. The well was too full. Jessica was tired of collecting failures.

And the worst part of it all? This goddamn case was far from solved.

 

 

* * *

 

 

Jessica honestly didn't want to be here right now doing what she was about to do. She had lost count of how many times she had climbed Trish's balcony over the years (especially when they were younger and Trish was always too busy doing drugs or getting drunk with her so called friends to even remember Jessica lived in the same apartment). But for some ungodly reason doing it tonight was triggering her fight or flight instinct so badly she had already puked twice after downing two bottles of whiskey at some random bar she couldn't even remember the name of.  
  
None of that was new to Jessica, but she had never thought that this building, of all places, would be the cause of _that_ . And yet, here she was, standing outside like a stranger, staring up at the all too familiar balcony with numb hands and cold bones.  
  
But she hated unfinished cases, and couldn't freaking wait to close this one.  
  
She switched her brain to ‘autopilot’ because she dealt with things better when she was numb, and took off, narrowly missing the ledge when she hit the ground. Jess hesitated for a minute or two outside the door, staring at the inside of the dark and empty apartment before she remembered that this was just a case like any other. _Get in, get the evidence, get closure, end of story._  
  
(Ha. Yeah right.)  
  
Jess curled her fingers around the frigid doorknob, jiggled the door a few times just to make sure it was locked, then broke the lock without a second thought.  
  
The living room looked exactly like it always had, which made a wave of nausea hit her so hard in the gut that the idea of fleeing out the window sounded wonderful right now.  
  
She ran a hand over her face and through her hair, forcing herself to focus. Then pulled her tiny lantern out of her bag and started her search for... nothing specific. Honestly, Jessica was just following her gut instinct. She _knew_ Trish and Hell Kitty In a Ridiculous Yellow and Blue Spandex Suit were the same person. She freaking _knew_ it. No proof needed. She just wanted to find something to _confirm_ it. Because... it would buy her some time before she had to accept the magnitude of the problem.  
  
"Come on. Where would a self-centered, control-freak superhero wannabe keep her hero shit?" Jessica mumbled, after searching Trish's room and finding nothing.  
  
(The place smelled too much like Trish and memories. Jessica just wanted to get the hell out of here.)  
  
_She wouldn't leave her suit behind_ , Jess thought. Because if Trish was out this late, then she was probably _in_ the suit. But she was not clever enough to cover up all evidence. _She must have left something behind somewhere..._ _  
_  
It was then that it hit her; there was no photo or video of this Cat from Hell person anywhere on the internet.  
  
Someone was taking care of social media, keeping up with the news, taking shit down before it spread around like the plague.  
  
Trish's laptop was resting casually on the kitchen counter. The whole shit with Mattie had happened less than 24 hours ago. Her browser history was still fresh. Perhaps. Maybe.  
  
Jessica unlocked the laptop and thanked the heavens or whatever was up there that Trish hadn't changed her password since they were in their early 20s.  
  
_("'_ FuckPatsy _'? Really?"_ _  
_ _  
_ _"What? I'll never forget that one."_ _  
_ _  
_ _"Yeah. You'll never forget this Patsy shit if you type it every day for the rest of your life."_ _  
_ _  
_ _Trish had shrugged. "It's reverse psychology. You repeat something too many times and it loses its power."_ _  
_ _  
_ _"Yeah. That's like saying if you stab yourself too many times you'll stop bleeding."_ _  
_ _  
_ _"It's not the same thing, Jess."_ _  
_ _  
_ _"Whatever. It's still stupid.")_ _  
_  
She scrolled down the browser history and... _Jesus_ . Trish hadn't even bothered to delete cache. There were searches from two months back, exactly when this whole crap had started to circulate the internet. Jessica scoffed. "Amateur."  
  
Jessica had to give her credit for at least managing to erase all good pictures and videos. Shit was hard to achieve. Or perhaps people were just bad at photographing and filming shit in the dark. Probably.  
  
Whatever. She had seen enough. She closed the lid of the laptop and rushed out, like the place was in flames and the smoke was closing her throat up.  
  
She didn't give a damn that Trish would be able to tell that she had been here from the broken door lock. Screw that.

_Fuck Patsy._

 

 

* * *

 

 

There was a knocking noise in Jess’s ears. There was also a throbbing in her head, like a hangover or some shit, and the thing under her cheek was itching her skin. She half-opened one eye, immediately recognizing her office—her boots were on the floor along with her jeans and a half-empty bottle of whiskey, which she only partially remembered bringing home last night.

Her legs were cold. Actually, her whole body was cold, and she pondered for a minute or two why she had thought that sleeping in her office without a blanket was a good idea.

And there was a knocking noise in her… no, _coming from_ her door. Someone was knocking on her door.

“Coming!” she called out, but her voice got lost somewhere between her throat and her tongue, so she spoke again, louder this time, “Just a second!”

Jess sat up, ignoring the fact that the room was spinning, and reached for her clothes, promptly slipping into her jeans—there was a single stain of blood on the left leg, right below the knee; Jessica wondered if it had been there since the night Mattie shot herself, but she couldn’t remember. She was putting on her boots when the knocking got harder and faster.

“God damn it,” she said under her breath, walking to the door. “I said, give me a minute, assh—”

She never got a change to finish because as soon as she opened the door Margo stormed in, kinda pushing Jessica out of the way, kinda just stumbling inside like she had been leaning against the door, instead of just banging on it.

“Hey! What the hell,” Jessica said, closing the door behind her, but Margo was not listening, because a torrent of words was coming out of her ever-red lips, and Jessica caught herself trying to make sense of whatever she was yelling about.

“...and I know they’re lying, so you have to tell me the truth!”

“Wait,” Jess said, moistening her lips. The numbness from the alcohol was wearing off, and the light seeping in through the window was blinding her. “Who’s lying?”

Margo looked as distressed as she sounded. “The cops. They had the nerve to tell me Mattie's dead. That there was a shot last night, and they found her blood.”

Jessica breathed deeply, just now noticing Margo’s wet eyelashes and red nose. Shit. It was too early for this. Like, several hours too early. It was barely 9AM.

“Okay,” Jess started. “I need you to calm down, okay, Franklin? There are about 130 other people in this building who would hate to wake up to someone screaming about murder, and one of them is 10 years old.”

Margo took a deep ragged breath, bracing herself on the edge of the desk. “Sorry.”

She said sorry a lot. It was getting on Jessica’s nerves.

“All right. Now, what exactly did the cops tell you?”

More tears welled up in Margo’s eyes. Jessica bit her tongue, her hands closing into fists. “They told me they found drug in her blood, which I was already expecting, but then they told me the blood in the crime scene was hers, and that there was a shot, but they couldn't find her body. Someone took it. But who and why? How do we even know she was shot?” A sob silenced her. “ _God_.”

Jessica’s head was throbbing harder now, somewhere behind her eyes. She had left before the police arrived so all of that was new information. She clenched her jaw, her throat dry. “The cops do have a tendency to omit the truth, but I don’t think they’re lying this time.”

Margo stopped crying. To be frank, she stopped functioning for a whole ten seconds—yes, Jess was counting, waiting for the other shoe to drop—before finally replying, in a voice so low Jess had to strain to hear. “How do you know that?”

“Because I was there.”

Another long pause. A choked sob. “You saw her?” Jess was just going to assume it was a rhetorical question, because she really did not want to get into the details. Especially not when she was growing increasingly aware of the fact that she had Mattie’s blood on her jeans. “Did you see who did that to her?”

“No,” Jess lied, because she wasn’t the best person to deliver that kind of information. She cleared her throat. “But I don’t think she took those drugs willingly.”

“What do you mean?”

Her phone buzzed somewhere in the apartment, and Jessica’s stomach clenched so hard she almost yelped in pain. She knew who was texting her—who had been texting her for the past three days. She was starting to remember why she had got so drunk the night before.

Margo was waiting, so Jessica forced the words out. “I guess she was running from someone that night, when I found her.”

Margo’s lips stretched  into the oddest smile Jessica had ever seen. Like her face was splitting in the middle, like she was breaking. “I knew it! Can you find out who did this?”

“That’s my job,” Jessica replied. Her phone buzzed again. She took a deep breath. “I’ll continue looking into this, okay? But I need you to back off. Go home, sleep it off, or meditate, or whatever is your thing. But stay away from this. Do you understand?”

Margo said nothing. Her eyes were too dark. Pitch black.

“Franklin, do you understand?”

She snapped back into consciousness. “Yes.” Margo was already walking to the door. “Thank you, Miss Jones.”

“Shit,” Jessica mumbled once she was finally alone, plopping down on the couch. But before her ass could warm up the place, her phone buzzed again. “ _Shit_.”

She found it in her desk. A small bottle of whiskey beside it, a bottle of glue on the other side. Jess picked it up, lighted up the screen. 15 messages. From Trish. She read the last one, only.

**_We need to talk._ **

Resisting the urge to crush her phone in her hands, Jess turned off the phone and slammed the drawer shut.

 

 

* * *

 

 

Jessica should have known Trish wouldn’t give up that easily.

 

 

* * *

 

 

It was late that night when the banging on her door returned. Less frantic this time, but just as irritating. Briefly, she assumed it might be Oscar, wanting to know why she had skipped dinner for the fifth night in a roll. But then again, Vido was sick with a cold or something. Jess discarded that possibility, taking a sip of her bourbon before going to answer the door.

“We’re closed,” Jessica said, and maybe it should have shocked her to find Trish standing on the other side of the door, but she couldn’t find it in her to feel… anything right now. Trish’s hair was up in a messy ponytail. A blue sports jacket and pants and sneakers draped over her body.

There was a joke pressed against the roof of her mouth about that look of hers. Something about her quitting her job and losing her common sense or whatever. But Jessica couldn't get the joke out, couldn't even form it completely in her mouth. Her brain was racing, and her whole body was shaking on the inside.

“Please, Jess, don’t close the door in  my face,” Trish said, holding one hand up.

Something throbbed behind Jessica’s eyes.

“Pretty bold of you to show up here again,” was what left Jess’s mouth.

The purple bags under Trish’s eyes looked even darker in the yellow lighting of the hallway. “I've called. About fifty times.”

“I know. I watched the phone ring.”

Trish pushed air out of her nose. “We need to talk.”

“We really don't.”

Trish crossed her arms then, eyebrows lifted high. That made her look like herself for the first time that night. “So we're just gonna pretend you didn't see me fighting those guys that night?”

Jessica shrugged, ignoring the acid in her stomach. “I'm not pretending anything. I'm just actively choosing not to talk about it.”

Trish pressed her lips together in a thin line, eyes dropping to the floor. Jessica partly wanted to disappear, partly wished Trish would, partly wanted to slam the door shut and pretend she _had._

“I might have a lead.”

On the list of things she didn't expect Trish to say, that was probably number one.

“Good for you.”

That’s the thing about pain: it’s fucking unpredictable. Right now, in her mind, all Jessica could hear was a single gunshot and the deafening silence that followed.

The silence had remained for days, in her head and in her whole body, the kind of numbness she only got when she had had too much to drink. When it was over, when the silence finally left, all noises had come rushing back, and then it was _everywhere;_ running under her skin like bed bugs, biting her behind her eyes whenever she tried to sleep, lurking in the shadows like a freaking Boogie Man feeding off your worst fears or whatever—if that was even the right monster because Jessica didn’t fucking know anymore.

She could feel that urge again—to claw herself out of her own skin.

“I have a name,” Trish was speaking, over the other noises, over her goddamn migraine and the urge to shut the door in her self-righteous face and _leave_. “A guy who knew Mattie, and who may or may not be linked to what happened.”

Jess swallowed. Tiny ice cubes scratching her throat and settling in the pit of her stomach, gelid and uncomfortable. “If this information is so valuable, then why don’t you use it yourself?”

Trish blinked once, twice. “Because I’m not a specialist in tracking people down. There’s only so much I can do. And maybe you don’t want to talk about what happened, but _this_ might actually be important.”

Every cell in her goddamn body was telling Jess to turn around and ignore whatever bullshit Trish was trying to sell here. And yet, against her best judgment, when she returned to her desk, she left the door open.

“How did you get the info?” Jess asked, uncapping a bottle of whiskey, which lay carelessly beside her laptop. She took three long gulps while Trish stepped in, closed the door, and walked over to the desk, eyes on Jessica.

She moistened her lips. “Uh, Karen Page. She’s a reporter for The Bulletin?”

Karen. Jess remembered her from the station. Tall, hair so blonde it could blind you in the sun. Pencil skirt. Small blue eyes that were deep in a way Jess couldn’t decipher. Attractive but modest. Obnoxiously polite even though she always looked like she was on the verge of having a mental breaking down, or shooting someone. Or both.

“Yeah, I know who she is.”

Trish nodded, smoothing her hoodie. It was pretty fucking weird to see Trish dressed like that. She looked like an ant who had lost track of her anthill. Like all of a sudden she had stopped belonging somewhere.

Jessica knew the feeling.

“Well, she’s press, so I knew she would be allowed to talk to the police and Mattie’s sister—who asked her not to publish anything about the case. So I told her about El Matador and Mattie’s boss and asked her to talk to him for me. I explained the situation to her, and she helped me out. Turns out, he gave her a name.”

Gotta admire Trish’s commitment to never in her life letting something just _go_.

Jessica breathed in. “And?”

“Gary Walsh. He used to pick Mattie up sometimes at Matador.”

Well, that _was_ good information. In all fairness, Jessica had thought about questioning Mattie’s boss, too. Had also considered checking the security footage from that night to try and identify one of the attackers—on the off chance that they might _have_ a security camera in that place. But she had ended up breaking into Trish’s apartment instead.

She breathed out. “Yeah, I already knew that.”

Trish’s eyebrows knitted together for a split second. “You did?”

“That’s my job; to know things.”

Her job also required her to lie quite often, which was why she had got so good at it. Or maybe she excelled at her job _because_ she was a good liar. Either way, it always came in handy.

Trish smiled. It looked odd on her face, not quite matching how worn out she seemed. As an impulse, Jessica focused on Trish’s eyes, on the greyish-blue of her irises and the tiny black dot of her pupils. They looked normal, not dilated or red or anything, so she figured that was a good sign.

“Sure,” Trish said, meekly. “So you’ll look into that?”

“Yeah.”

Trish held her glare for a moment. “You know, if you need anything, I could help.”

Jess’s first instinct was to shiver, the second was to snort, her nails digging into her palm.“I think you've done enough.”

Maybe Trish really flinched, maybe Jessica just imagined that, and maybe she should have felt anything other than raw anger, but she didn't. _Couldn't_. Her body was too stiff—a cord wrapped around her spine, forcing her to stand tall and rigid.

Trish bit her bottom lip, the flesh turning white, then pink again. “Okay,” Trish said. Jessica inhaled. “I should go.”

It wasn't before Jessica heard the noise of the elevator doors sliding closed that the cord holding her together finally snapped and Jessica fell back into her chair.

 

 

* * *

 

 

Gary Walsh lived in an old-fashioned building in Brooklyn—brown stones and concrete steps with black railings, which was decorated with pigeon shit and dry bubblegum; that kinda thing. His parents owned a big house in Queens, but Gary Boy had been living by himself since he finished college, a couple years back. All that info was available on his Facebook for everyone to see, and Jessica was beyond pissed that Trish had been the one to mention this guy, because he was _right there_ under her nose.

Jess had been waiting here, in this alley across from his apartment, for three hours. She had already eaten a hot dog and drank two cans of Red Bull, and she was about 85% sure she would need to pee really soon, so she hoped it wouldn’t take _too_ long for Gary to get the hell out of his building.

Luckily for her, five minutes later, he did.

Him plus a suitcase that was so large Jess couldn’t see his legs. People didn’t usually run away unless they had something to hide, or were hiding from someone. She was about to find out which one was it.

“Hey, Gary, going anywhere?” Jess asked, crossing the street, hands in her pockets, her steps heavy against the ground.

Gary turned, alarmed. Maybe too alarmed, to be honest. Eyes growing twice their size, a hand flying to his chest, his keys falling to the ground, his whole body pressing up against the door.

“Who—who are you?” he stammered. Jess could see his Adam’s apple bobbing up and down.

Not exactly the reaction she was expecting to get from him.

“I’m Jessica Jones. I’m a private eye—” she started, but Gary cut in with a voice that was more frantic than before;

“Who the fuck sent you? Are they with you?”

He was moving his head so forcefully from one side to the other Jess was afraid it might fall off his neck.

She pulled one hand out of her pocket, holding it up defensively. “Listen, I have no idea what you’re talking about, Gary. Okay?” Jess wet her lips. “I’m here because of Mattie.”

Recognition flickered in his eyes for a split second. “So you’re alone?”

“I’m alone,” she assured him, stepping closer now. “I have reasons to suspect you’re holding information about Mattie Franklin. I just need some answers.”

He shook his head. “I can’t help you with that.”

The moment he touched the handle of his suitcase, Jessica moved forward, putting a hand to his chest to keep him in place.

“Ow,” left his lips as his back smashed against the wood door. Jess didn’t care—not right now, later maybe.

“I think you can,” she said, brushing hair out of her eye. “You can start by telling me who are ‘ _they_ ’.”

Gary was struggling to breathe, not because she was adding too much pressure to his chest, but because he was probably almost shitting himself. “I can’t tell you that.”

Jessica breathed out through her nose. “Okay, look, I thought you were one of _them,”_ she let enough venom and sarcasm leak into her voice to send the message, “but clearly you’re just as terrified as Mattie was.”

Gary blinked. “You thought I worked with them?”

“But now that I know you don’t, I won’t hurt you.” Jess released him, taking a step backwards to let him catch his breath. “You’re a friend of Mattie’s?”

Gary nodded, still apprehensive, as though he was expecting a bullet to find its way into his chest or his head like it had happened to Mattie a couple of days ago. ( _Probably_ ; the word echoed in Jessica’s mind. No body no crime, and she wanted to turn that situation around as soon as possible).

“Her boss said you used to pick her up.”

Gary looked sad for a fraction of a second. “I was trying to get her out.”

Jess gave him a few seconds but his sentence died there. She pressed, “Out of where?” He said nothing. “Out of _what_? Drugs?”

He put both of his hands up. “Listen, Lady, if I say anything about this I’ll end up just like Mattie. I really can’t help you.”

Jessica held him by his sleeve this time. “Gary,” she said, throat suddenly dry, “Mattie’s dead, and there’s nothing I or you can do to change that. But they took her body somewhere for some reason. And maybe I can help, but you need to tell me _who_ they are and _where_ I can find her.”

Jess imagined that this was one of those moments where, in cartoons, they put a tiny devil and a tiny angel on the character’s shoulders and they spoke at the same time and started to drive the character insane, because Gary looked like his inner turmoil was about to kill him.

“If you want to know anything about this,” he said at last, his breathing ragged. “You should talk to Laney Hayness.”

It was then that they heard it, a loud thud coming from somewhere behind them. Gary shivered from head to toe, like jelly. Jess turned around to stare into the darkness but found nothing there.

“I gotta go. Sorry.”

“Wait!” Jess shouted, but he was already running down the street, pulling his suitcase behind him like an elementary schooler too excited to get to school. Except he was running from—yet another—secret organization who were murdering people and only God knew why. “Shit.”

Then—and Jessica should have seen this coming, because _of course_ it would happen—something, or rather _someone_ , hurried past her so quickly she barely had time to register it before the person reached Gary with ease, grabbing him by his hoodie, forcing him to stop with a jolt.

And _God-fucking-damn-it_ , not this shit again.

“Trish!” Jessica shouted, half of her attention dedicated to finding out how, exactly, they had put so much distance between herself and them in such a short period of time. “Goddamnit, let him go!”

Gary squirmed and groaned, but Trish was doing that thing where she wrapped one arm around his neck Krav Maga style, using her whole body—and enhanced reflexes, Jessica could tell, had achieved it somewhere in her brain, in the same file she had saved other relevant information, like her enhanced speed and horrible tendency to show up at the worst possible moments—to keep him exactly where she wanted him to be.

She had done that to Jessica many times. Without the Krav Maga. With just words and crossed arms and her raised eyebrow and that insufferably condescending tone she always used when she knew she was right and—‘ _Jess, you’re better than that’_.

It was almost too ironic that when Jessica had finally started to believe that, Trish hadn’t been the one saying the words.

Something shifted, suddenly, interrupting Jess’s thoughts. Gary reached for Trish’s throat with one quick movement, his fingers curling around her neck as if he wanted to strangle her, or pull her head off or both. Trish yelled—one of the most excruciating noises Jess had ever heard. Jessica’s goddamn stomach sank into her guts and she pushed herself forward, because despite everything she could not ignore Trish getting hurt— _because_ of everything she could not ignore Trish getting hurt.

She was the only person Jessica had left.

But Gary was off her a second later, and Trish was on the ground, coughing, one hand around her throat. Gary was on the move again, running faster than before, his suitcase in his arms this time. A car stopped around the corner and he jumped in, disappearing down the street in a matter of seconds.

Trish was sitting on the ground, still breathing heavily, a stupid beanie covering her head and hiding her hair, a blue-and-black scarf on the floor near her legs, and—yeah, she was _definitely_ Daredevil’s type.

Jess walked up to her, let the air out through her nose.

“Congratulations, asshole, you suck more at this superhero shit than I do.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> English is not my first language so I apologize for any mistakes that I didn't notice.


	2. Part 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry it took me a hundred years (a month) to update this, but my cat got a little sick I had to be a full time nurse for like 20 days until he got all better, but now I'm on vacation so next update should come sooner!
> 
> This chapter is dialogue heavy and there isn't much action happening here, but it was necessary to move the plot forward, and also bring Jess and Trish closer. Next chapter is full of detective shenanigans, though. Promise!
> 
> PS: The facts about the names Hayness and Laney are true. I actually looked that shit up just because lmao
> 
> Hope you guys like it :)

It was half past eleven when Jessica arrived at her apartment. Alone. Because although Trish had insisted—insisted _a lot_ , and Jessica was getting really fucking tired of how hard she held onto shit, like super glue, or some lingering trauma, or whatever—Jessica had very politely told her to back the fuck off and stay out of this shit.

Now, Jessica was not stupid, she knew Trish wouldn’t give up. Only she needed to sit alone and drink and think for the rest of the night. Think about what the hell was going on with Trish, and Mattie, and Gary, and who the fuck was Laney Hayness, and did Jess even have enough bourbon in her apartment or had she drunk it all after Trish’s last visit?

Jess also needed a shower. She didn’t remember showering the night before, wasn’t sure if she had, all of her panties were black so it was hard to tell.

( _Underwear! Grown women wear underwear, Jessica._ )

Jessica squeezed her eyes tightly closed, until she started to see white spots behind her eyelids, until the voice was gone—for the time being, never forever, always an echo in the back of her head along with all the other echoes, along with _‘You like it, Jessica, you know you do’_ and _‘Tell me you love me’_ and _‘Smile, Jessica’, ‘Smile’, ‘Smile’, ‘Smile’,_ and sometimes Jess just wanted to reach inside her skull and pull everything out until she couldn’t feel a fucking thing anymore.

Alcohol helped, most of the time. So she tossed her jacket onto the couch and grabbed a bottle, gulping down as much liquor as she could manage before having to inhale.

In her room, there was a loud thud. Something hitting the ground—like the sound of someone landing after jumping through the window. Jess put the bottle down, hands balling into fists, blood racing to her head, and followed the noise.

She stood outside of the door for a solid three seconds, listening. Then pushed the door open and seized the first thing she saw moving in front of her eyes, prepared to punch and—

“Jess, don’t! It’s me!”

Jessica searched for the appropriate feeling somewhere in her body. Decided that _‘fucking pissed’_ was as good as it could get.

Jess let go of her hoodie, eyes adjusting to the darkness, now. “Trish, what the hell!?”

Trish fixed the hoodie on her body. Without heels, Trish was a good foot shorter than Jessica. It made her chest tighten for some ungodly reason. “I wasn’t sure you’d answer the door.”

“What, so you jumped through the window?”

Trish had the nerve to shrug. “You’ve climbed my balcony multiple times.”

That was… not a fucking answer, and Jess could really use a bouncing ball right now because she was about to lose it.

“Okay, let me rephrase that; what the hell are you _doing_ here?”

Trish rubbed her neck, which was wrapped up in her scarf. “We need to talk about Gary. His hands… they were...” she blinked, wetting her lips, “too hot.”

Jessica frowned. “What?”

Trish opened her mouth to speak, but a knock on the door stopped her.

“Jessica, you home?”

On the list of _Nights Jess Wished She Could Erase From Her Memory_ , tonight was pushing closer to the top really freaking fast.

“Goddamnit, not now,” she murmured, running a hand through her hair.

Trish was doing that thing where she frowned so hard it made her look constipated. “Who is it?”

Jessica breathed out as Oscar knocked again. “It’s just… the super.”

“Why? Are you in trouble?” Trish’s voice was tinged with concern.

Something sharp stabbed her in the gut, quick and hard. “No, just— _shit_. Just stay here, okay? I need to answer that.”

Oscar studied her face far too meticulously when she opened the door, looking for injuries perhaps, or maybe already predicting the lie that was about to jump out of her mouth. He had been around for a while, he had already learned the basics (which, was _she_ really that predictable or was _he_ very observant? She wasn’t sure if she wanted to know the answer).

“Are you okay?” asked Oscar, one hand on her wrist, the other on her cheek. “I heard a clash down here and got worried about you.”

“I’m fine.”

Oscar scanned her apartment from what he could see over her shoulder. A single crease appeared between his eyebrows as he said, “Sorry, I didn’t mean to interrupt.”

“Oh, don’t worry,” answered a voice that wasn’t Jessica’s, and _why in the fuck_ was Jess surrounded by idiots who never listened to a word she said?

She took a deep breath as Trish continued, politely, as if she was supposed to _be_ here. “Hi, we've met before, but I didn’t introduce myself. I’m Trish Walker.” She held out a hand for Oscar to shake.

“I’m Oscar. ” Oscar smiled, and for a split second Jessica kind of wanted to ask him about Vido, but she was actually glad that Vido was not here right now to make this whole situation about 35% worse.

“Sorry, we’re in the middle of something,” was what she said instead, a little more emphatically than she had expected. She could see question marks all over Oscar’s face.

“You sure you’re okay?” he asked again, because he always repeated that question depending on how many glasses of wine she had had, or how tired she looked, or how little she had eaten. He noticed _everything_. And Jess had to constantly fight the very visceral instinct to shut him out. Which essentially meant biting her tongue and reminding herself not to snap. Some days were easier than others.

“Yeah. Just busy.”

He nodded, acceptance in his eyes. “Alright. We’ll talk later.”

“Okay,” said Jess, and forced a smile to her lips before closing the door.

Trish was sustaining a smirk. Jessica braced herself. “He’s cute,” Trish said, and her voice was far too soft and welcoming and Jessica couldn’t handle any of that right now.

“Don’t. Okay?” Jess warned, walking over to her desk. She needed more bourbon.

“I’m just saying...”

Jess glared at her. “Off topic, Trish. Back to Gary Steamy Hands, or whatever.”

“His touch was too hot for a minute. I was caught off guard, that’s why I let go of him.”

“He burned you?” Even in the dark, after the fight with Gary, Jess had been able to see red spots spreading on the skin of Trish’s neck, but she figured it was from the grabbing and squeezing rather than a burn.

Now, however, as Trish unwrapped her neck, Jess could clearly see the blisters popping out.

“I guess we can assume he has powers, too.”

“Yeah, no shit.”

Trish started to pace around, arms crossed. “So maybe whoever was after Mattie went after him, too.”

Jessica let the whiskey burn the inside of her cheeks and numb her tongue before swallowing. “I figured that out when he almost pissed his pants. He thought _you_ were one of them. Thought he was going to die or whatever.”

Trish stopped, let her arms drop. “We should go after him.”

Jess twisted her eyebrows, leaning back in her chair. “Good luck with that. At this point he’s probably on his way to another city, or state, or country.”

"You sure?”

“He wouldn’t stick around and wait for his brains to explode next. He knows how dangerous they are.” She paused, frustration surging in her stomach. “Whoever _they_ are.”

Trish looked slightly distressed. Or perhaps she was just in pain. “Did he tell you anything?”

Jess worked her jaw. Something stirred behind her belly button. “Nope.”

There was no way in hell Jess would tell Trish about Laney Hayness before checking it up herself. She had no idea if the information was even remotely legit. Perhaps he was bluffing just to save his own ass, maybe he was telling the truth, only way to find out was to google information about Hayness and see what she could find.

(And, now that Jess thought about it, she had a vague sensation that she had seen that name before somewhere.)

Trish’s lips were pressed together in a thin line, which usually meant she was either skeptical or plotting her next move and neither of those options looked good right now.

“All right. So what do you _know_ about this case so far?” She took the seat before Jessica and for a second, two at tops, Jessica just stared at her, unsure if she was saying anything at all, and wondered how could any of this be so easy for Trish.

It had _always_ been this easy for her. The talking, the intimacy, the weaving her way into Jessica’s life and her thoughts, and walking into her apartment and sitting in her chair and sneaking under her skin until her blood was racing so goddamn fast it disrupted every single one of her already disturbing thoughts. Trish had effortlessly climbed the fortress Jessica had built around herself and claimed the most important role in Jessica’s life when they were 15. And she kept doing that time and time again no matter how tough things got, or how terrible, or how _wrong_.

Exhibit 342: This moment right here. Irrevocably wrong. And _yet_...

Jess sighed, reaching for the bottle of whiskey and uncapping it. There was no point in hiding it from Trish anymore. It wasn’t like she was going to let this shit go. “Not much. Apparently, someone is selling drugs that grants people temporary powers. It’s been going on for months.” Except neither Mattie nor Gary seemed to be into that crap.

Trish was silent for a full five seconds. “Jess, isn’t that a little too close to home?”

Jess took a swig. “Hadn’t noticed.”

Trish scowled at her. “No, I mean, isn’t it strangely familiar? What if the two cases are connected?”

Jess chewed on the inside of her cheek. Where had she _seen_ the name Hayness before? In the college yearbook Malcolm had stolen when they were investigating Dr. Karl Malus? No. Somewhere else. _Come on, Jones._

“They aren’t.”

“How can you be so sure?”

“Because it’s not just IGH, okay?” said Jess curtly, the whiskey singing her throat and making her guts coil. “There were other crazy scientists before Karl. Remember Albert and Louise? All the other doctors from those videos? There was proof of experiments happening all around the world, Trish. You cut one head off, two more grow. They won’t stop as long as they’re profiting from it.”

For once, thankfully, Trish didn’t argue. “Good point.” She got up to go get some water.

In the kitchen, Trish brought a hand to her neck again, grimacing slightly when her fingers touched the sore skin. Jessica bit her tongue, trying really hard not to focus on how much her stomach was churning right now, pushing all the booze back up.

 _Fuck_ . She really needed to take a shower and think. _Alone_. Like she had planned before the whole thing went to shit (again).

Jessica swallowed a couple times. Breathed deeply. Said, “Is enhanced healing a thing for you?”

Trish turned to her, lid of the glass until touching her lips. “What?”

Jess huffed. “Can you heal fast?”

Trish blinked. “I don’t know. I haven’t tested that yet.”

The use of _‘yet’_ in that sentence was surely unsettling, but Jessica let that one slide. There was only so much shit she could handle in one day, and tonight was testing her limits.

“Then you might want to get that checked out.”

“I’m fine,” was Trish’s answer because of course it was.

Jessica argued just for the sake of it. “There are literal blisters on your neck, Trish.”

“I’m _fine_. Don’t worry.”

For a few seconds, Jess only breathed. Then, “How did you know Mattie was there?” Because that was something Jess was really curious about.

Trish, for the first time, looked slightly ill at ease. “I didn’t,” she answered, and downed her glass of water in two gulps.

When she didn’t say anything else, Jess pressed, “Then how the hell did you find her that night?”

Trish stood very still for a moment. Sucked her bottom lip between her teeth. “I felt it.”

“You _what_?”

Trish sighed, walking into her office again and stopping near her couch. “I don’t know how to explain it. It’s like a sixth sense or something.”

Jess narrowed her eyes, her lips parting involuntarily because _what the fuck_.

“I hope that’s a joke.” And thank fucking God her voice was devoid of any emotion.

“I feel this anxiety building up in my stomach sometimes—”

“Yeah, I get that too whenever I’m out of bourbon.”

“—tugging me towards something. Then I just follow it. I felt it that night, and ended up finding Mattie.”

“Jesus.” Because, _Jesus_ —how did they end up here?

Trish came to stand in front of her again. “But, Jess, what you said before, about Albert and Louise and those experiments… Maybe we should check those videos again.”

Something hit her in the back, right in the bone. “No.”

Trish tipped her head to one side. “Why not?”

“I don’t have the flash drive anymore.” By the look in Trish’s eyes, she was still not convinced. “I gave it back to Luke a long time ago.”

“Well, maybe we could ask—”

“I said _no_ ,” Jess said again, pushing her chair back and standing up, voice adopting a sharp tone, and if Trish was smarter she would have shut the hell up.

“It’s not gonna hurt anyone to go through those files again.”

Except it _would_ , Jess thought. “Last time I spoke to Luke he was trying to leave all that crap behind him. I’m not gonna bring him into this shit again. And if you can’t respect my decision, then at least respect his."

She didn’t mean to snap, but it happened anyway, and right now she didn’t have it in her to regret it. She was just relieved that Trish had finally gone quiet. Her ears were ringing.

“Okay,” was her only answer, and it was barely even there, and against her best judgment Jess was starting to feel really small.

She walked into her kitchen, grabbed a half-empty glass of whiskey and took a sip. “There was a nurse at Mount Sinai,” Jess offered from the kicthen, eyes on the floor, because she couldn’t exactly look at Trish right now. “The one that treated you. She said you weren’t the only one. That there had been other victims of sociopathic maniacs who tried to play God.”

“You mean other subjects of experiments?” Trish inquired, her interest flaring up again.

“Other lab rats, yeah.” Jess sucked her bottom lip into her mouth. “I didn’t give much attention to it back then, but…”

“But maybe we should check that up now,” Trish finished. Jess simply shrugged, as if she didn’t want to shrink into herself and fucking _disappear_. “I could go to the hospital and see what I can find.”

Jess nodded. “Yeah, you do that.”

Trish raised her eyebrows. “Really?”

Jess met her eyes again. It was harder than before. “Didn’t you say you wanted to help? Then go there and talk to the nurse. Just—don’t do anything stupid.”

There was a smile tugging at one corner of her lips. “Like, steal some hospital records?”

“Exactly.”

“ _You_ would do that.”

“Yeah, and unless you want to spend some time in the interrogation room, you won’t.”

Trish had the nerve to laugh through her nose. “Noted.” She wrapped her scarf around her neck again. “I’ll text you if I find anything.”

“Yeah, okay.”

And then, _finally_ , Trish closed the door of the office and Jessica found herself alone.

 

 

* * *

 

 

Hayness. Alternative spelling: Haynes. A much more common surname than Jessica had anticipated (about 62,000 results), which could be traced back to Britain and Ireland—like many of the modern surnames in the dictionary, really.

Laney. A designer and manufacturer of guitars in the UK, and also first _or_ middle name of thousands of male _and_ female around the globe.

Put the two names together and all Jessica could find were 49 dusty and pointless results—including the name of a castle located somewhere 30 minutes from Dallas, and at least 30 people who were either too old or too young to be involved in criminality. Rendering the name—and only clue she had so far—all but useless.

She was going to have to dig deeper than that. Hell deep.

_Fuck._

 

 

* * *

 

 

Jessica had to admit that sitting at a bar at five-something in the afternoon, downing glasses of whiskey all by herself and ignoring all 16 times her phone had buzzed (two calls from Oscar, six from Hogarth, seven from numbers she didn’t know and therefore didn’t give a shit about) probably wasn’t the best way to deal with this situation. She _knew_ it. Ignorance had never been her problem. It had always been about _not_ doing the stupid thing. Finding a better moral compass to follow than her own—battered and bruised and never dependable.

Rarely did she accomplish that. So, naturally, here she was, about to make the Worst Mistake of The Week.

(It was not like she _had_ much choice, anyway.)

“Another one?” asked the young boy behind the counter. Small, skinny as a twig, black curly hair, and an innocence in his eyes that reminded her of Malcolm a little too much.

Jessica’s grip around the glass tightened. “Yeah.” She watched as he poured her some whiskey, let the words climb up her throat and curl around her tongue, sour and sharp. “Hey, uh, do you know where I can find Luke?”

His eyebrows went up and his mouth twisted; an expression that pretty much said _‘are you serious?’_ because finding Luke was about as hard as spotting the sun these days. She could have used that damn app, or just googled his address, or she could have turned up at Paradise and left a note or something. But she had already tried this stalker thing once, had already taken more than he was willing to offer, more than she was allowed to. Hurting Luke again was not risk she was willing to take.

“Girl, you asked the right person. I see Luke every day,” he bragged, and part of her wanted to snort (for someone who used to stay hidden, Luke was literally _everywhere_ now) and part of her just wanted to run. “If you wanna talk to him—”

“What do you want with Luke?” asked someone to her left. Jessica turned. ‘ _Selene’_ read her name tag. She was twice the size of Luke’s young stan, but they had the same eyes. Siblings, probably. She looked too young to be his mother.

“He’s, uh, a friend of mine.” She wished that word didn’t taste like a lie— _friend_.

Selene narrowed her eyes just slightly. “Friend huh? How do you know him?”

Christ. She hated that question. Jessica swallowed heavily. “We worked together once. Twice, actually.”

Selene made a face. “You don’t look like the kind of person Luke would work with.”

“It was kind of unplanned,” she replied with a sigh.

“Uhuh.” Selene placed a hand on her hip. “So, since you’re friends with him, why don’t you call him instead of sniffing around?” She shot her brother a reprimanding look for almost spilling out more than Jessica needed to know.

Jessica scowled. Hard. “Thanks, I’ll find him myself.”

As soon as she stood up to leave, the tiny bell above the door announced someone’s arrival. Surprise wasn’t exactly the feeling that surged in her chest when she saw Luke standing by the door, but Jessica had been feeling a lot of emotions she couldn't identify lately, so it was whatever.

Some secrets were better kept in places nobody could ever find them.

“Luke,” she said as a reaction, her body going suddenly still.

His eyebrows knitted together, but she could see the ghost of a smile on his lips as he said, “Jess?”

He looked different. _Shockingly_ different in his grey suit and gold tie and fancy trousers and polished shoes, a huge contrast to his usual jeans and a hoodie. But his eyes were still tender, so she supposed it wasn’t a bad kind of different.

Luke was too good for _bad_ , anyway.

“Yo, Luke, your friend was looking for you,” said Selene’s brother, who apparently never shut up.

“Zip it, A.J.,” Selene scolded. Turning to Luke with eyebrows so high on her forehead it looked cartoonish,  she said, “So you do know each other?”

Jessica glared at her and hoped she would take the hint. “I need to talk to you,” she said to Luke, then added, emphatically, still glaring at Selene, “Privately.”

Luke seemed to ponder for a second or two before nodding. “I’ll be right back,” he told A.J. as Jessica pushed the door open and trotted out into the streets.

She waited for Luke to catch up (easily, they had walked together before, he was used to her pace), then asked, “What’s her deal?”

Luke glanced at her briefly, shoulders relaxed. “I help her out sometimes. Keeping her brother away from trouble.” He paused shortly, his voice slightly amused when he added, “She was just returning the favor.”

That was teasing, Jess knew it. The thing about walking this wire with Luke was that they usually slipped off but never really hit the ground. And Maybe that was the feeling in her chest—something like falling from a great height, or the fear that came with it.

“In between fighting crimes with the mobs at Paradise?”

Luke stopped. Frowned. “You heard about that?”

Jessica scoffed. “Who _hasn’t_? Heard it’s a tough business.”

They resumed walking, slower than before. They were in no rush this time. “Just trying something new. Use that place to right some wrongs.”

Jess twisted her eyebrows. “How’s that working out for you so far?”

Luke pretended to think about it for a second. “It's tough business.”

“Ah,” Jess said, as they turned a corner. The streets were emptier here, fewer people staring at them. The knots in her stomach began to untie.

“How you doing?” he asked next, voice light, and the question caught her off guard.

She moistened her lips, shivering when the wind blew a little too hard on her face. “Okay. I guess.”

“Heard you expanded your business.” At her frown, he explained, “Guy from Harlem hired you a while back.”

She shrugged. “I’m just trying this thing where I occasionally take cases that don’t involve people boning.”

This time, he smiled. “Good for you.”

“Speaking of which…” Jess started, ignoring the sweat in her palms. “I’m here for a case, actually.”

“Need backup muscles?” The easiness  in his voice made her liver sink into her guts.

“Not really.” Jess paused. They were at a park of some sort. Wood benches placed under naked trees and a few kids playing on the playground. She blew air out of her mouth. “The flash drive. The one that belonged to Reva.”

Luke’s face remained impassive. But she could see the muscles in his jaw clenching just briefly. “What you need it for?”

“I’m looking into this shit that’s been going on in Hell’s Kitchen. Some maniac has been using kids, selling them some kind of drug that grants them powers. When I went after a possible suspect they gave me a name. I’ve seen that name before.”

Luke held his shoulders straighter. “In those videos?”

Jess shook her head. “I’m not sure. But since we don’t have a list of every crazy scientist that’s ever done something illicit, the next best thing is those files.” A pause. “If you’re okay with that.”

The worry is in his eyes dissolved into something like acceptance. He relaxed his jaw. “I’m okay with that.” His voice confirmed that, too. Which somehow only made Jessica feel worse. “I’m staying at Paradise. It’s not so far from here."

That was a silent invitation, so Jess walked beside him, her hands shoved deep into the pockets of her peacoat. There was something in her mouth, like oil. Dancing between her teeth. She wanted to spit it out.

“Don’t worry, I won’t open the files that were meant for you.”

Luke glanced down at her. He must have seen something there, in her eyes or on her face, because what he said next was, “You can open them. It’s all in the past. The things in the flash drive, and what happened because of it. All of that. Gone."

Jessica didn’t know what to _do_ with that, so she simply said, “You take this moving forward thing quite seriously, huh?”

And for a moment, Jessica wished she had half the strength Luke had. To untangle the past from her brain like gum from your hair, to undo the tiny little nest of remorse in her chest and for once just _let go._

Her entire life, she had taught herself how to keep on living. She had never really learned how to move forward. But she hadn’t broken anything over the past few months, so maybe she was learning.

Luke laughed breathily. “It’s the only way.” He stopped again, right outside Paradise. Nodded to himself rather than her, then added, in a voice so calm it reached every single one of her nerves. “Besides, at the end of the day, you did a shitty thing, but you’re not a shitty person.”

Later, when he placed the flash drive on her cold palm—squeezing her hand reassuringly—and she thanked him, they both knew she wasn’t just talking about the files.

 

 

* * *

 

 

It was going to rain. Jessica could tell from the massive dark clouds gathering above her head. Carrying an umbrella was already bad enough (reason why she didn’t even own one), but walking around _other_ people with umbrellas and having to get out of their way, so they wouldn’t hit her in the face, was actually hell on earth. And now that she thought about it, she should have caught a cab the moment she left the subway, but when had she ever made the right decision when the moment called for it?

It was when she walked past a building made of stone in some dark corner of Hell’s Kitchen that she heard something hitting the ground right behind her. A familiar sound, if you asked her. She had heard it before.

Jess turned around, her eyes landing on what she was already expecting. A baton. Black and long and frustratingly similar to the ones that had been used to strangle that shady guy several months ago. She bent down to pick it up, staring at it as if she could make it disappear. Then looked straight up at the roof of the building.

Jess could make out his outline in the darkness if she squinted a little. “Seriously?” He dove deeper into the shadows cast by nearby buildings, so Jessica begrudgingly told her legs to do the jump thing and take her where she needed to be.

Her boots left a footprint when she landed, but she didn’t fall or roll around this time, so she figured she was getting the hang of it. Perhaps. “You really need to find a better way of catching someone's attention than throwing shit at them. Ever heard of phones?”

She threw the baton at him. He caught it effortlessly. “I don’t have a phone on me.”

“Predictably. What do you want?”

His mouth twisted. “I have something to show you.”

Jessica’s brow furrowed. “Up here?”

“Follow me.”

Before Jessica could protest, tell him to cut the crap and talk to her before she followed him anywhere, he was already on the move, doing his parkour shit, using his batons as grappling cables or whatever it was that those things did. And _what in the hell_ was Jessica supposed to _do_ here? It had _just_ started to drizzle, and it wasn’t like she had any experience jumping from one rooftop to the other, like some less entertaining and more suicidal version of fucking Mario.

She _did_ know how to use the fire escapes, though. So she spent the next fifteen minutes or so following Murdock around in a much less gracious way, smashing her back and arms against the railings (she was, like, 50% sure she had hit her shoulder a little too hard; the thing was starting to sting), until finally, _finally_ , he stopped. Jess climbed the last fire escape, pushing herself up onto the rooftop, her shoulder protesting.

“What is it, some test-drive for which building has the best outlook?” She needed a moment to catch her breath, her lungs were too large for her chest suddenly.

“Down there,” said Murdock, and the tone in which he delivered that line was more than enough to make her blood freeze.

Jessica inched closer to the ledge, feeling something inside her tear apart when she saw the body lying there, a pool of blood around his head, his left leg bent in an odd angle, like a boomerang. She should be familiar with the stench of death at this point.

Her body still reacted to it, though. She couldn’t feel her face or her tongue, but she knew she was speaking. “What happened to him?” Her voice was an octave too low, scratching at the corners.

In a moment of rare vulnerability, Murdock removed his mask. Nobody came to this part of the city at this time of the night unless they wanted to end up like the boy down in the alley. He turned his head to her. “I don’t know. I was trying to locate someone else when I came across the body.” He breathed out, sharp and shallow. “He sounded young.”

“He was alive?”

“Barely.”

It was hard to breathe; something like a lump blocking her throat. “He looks young.”

“Do you think he’s one of them?”

Jessica shrugged before she remembered he couldn’t see that. Then jumped off to analyze the scene closely.

Now that she was standing right here beside him, she could notice the puke on his shirt, the needle marks on his arms and neck, and the dark blood coming out of his nose and ears. Jessica crouched down to check for a pulse she knew wasn’t there, his skin rough and cold against her fingers. His veins were too purple and swollen, popping out under his pale skin.

“I smell blood,” Murdock said from behind her.

“Yeah, don’t need super senses for that.” Her voice sounded trapped. Probably by the vomit that was threatening to come out.

Her skin was hot under her coat, her blood rushing to her head. (It was really fucking uncomfortable to know that Murdock could hear all the shit that was going on in her body, like a human scanner or whatever, and she kind of wanted to punch something out of frustration, but she just closed her eyes, bit her tongue, and counted up to ten instead. Street names didn’t do the trick anymore.)

“How bad is it?”

_In and out, Jones. In and out._

“There’s blood coming out of nearly every hole in his body.”

Murdock frowned, his eyes clouded (probably by the blindness, but partially by the scene he could see in his very own way, Jessica supposed). “So he was poisoned.”

Jessica let out a noise, pushing herself up into a standing position, her legs felt dormant. “There’s no way he paid for this shit.”

He frowned harder, cocking his head to one side. “What?”

Jessica sucked her teeth. “Mattie’s sister said the kids were paying for this drug, but maybe not all of them are. They need some lab rats to run experiments on before they can sell it to those who can afford it.”

Murdock’s face was unreadable, his gloved hands balled into fists. “Homeless people.”

“Homeless kids, orphans, people everybody overlooks.” And _now_ this was hitting far too close to her goddamn wrecked-burned-and-buried home. Which was probably why something between her ribs was starting to ache. “There's more where he came from.”

Jessica knew anger could manifest in many different ways, but the deadly silence coming from Murdock was too scary even for her. When he spoke, his voice cut like razors. “Do you have any idea who is doing this?”

“I'm getting closer.” Or at least, that was what she hoped. “I need to call 911.” Anonymously. She didn't want to deal with this shit right now.

“I’ll try to find the other kids,” Murdock said as Jess felt blindly for her phone. She found it in her bag. “I’ll come to you if I find anything.”

Jessica waited until he was out of sight to dial the police.

 

 

* * *

 

 

Here’s a fact about Murdock that Jessica had never thought about before, but was starting to assimilate now, and was still debating whether she should add it to her _‘Creepy And Weird’_ list or her ‘ _Incomprehensible But Sort Of Useful’_ list: how he did all that ballet-fighting shit without running out of breath or needing a full year to recover from injuries, considering that enhanced healing wasn’t one of his (many, still partially unknown) powers.

 _Her_ shoulder, however, felt like a building had collapsed on top of it. And although she was sure all the pain would be gone in the morning, she’d have to deal with that for the rest of the night, which was about as fun as being kicked in crotch repeatedly.

And she was soaked to the freaking bone.

She shook off her pea coat (and _of course_ she would decide to leave her leather jacket home the day of a storm, it was just her luck) as soon as she entered her apartment, before turning the lights on, before being able to identify the shadow leaned against her desk, with arms crossed and eyebrows lifted high on her face.

Jess stopped with a jerk, as if invisible hands had yanked her back. “Do I need to get grills for my windows?”

Trish blinked, unfazed. “I used the door this time.”

“ _What_?”

“I used the spare key you left lying around on Malcolm’s desk,” Trish replied, as if that was a plausible answer, as if it was _acceptable_.

_(You disappear for months. Six months, actually. And then come back asking for money?)_

Jess sighed. “I want my key back.” Her wet hair was sticking to her neck and forehead, so she pulled it up into something reminiscent of a bun and walked over to her desk, dropping her bag on the couch.

“I called you. You didn’t answer,” said Trish. Jessica checked the injuries on her neck. The blisters were gone, but the skin was still swollen and red. It was unsettling. “Are you okay?”

Jess filled her lungs completely then emptied them again. “My phone died.” Which reminded her she needed to charge it. She pulled it out of her pocket, thanking Whatever or Whoever was Up There for the fact that it was dry, and plugged it in. “What do you want?”

“Uh, the nurse,” Trish started, touching a hand to her forehead. “I went to the hospital to talk to that nurse about the other patients.”

In the kitchen, Jess poured herself some whiskey in a mug, opened her fridge for the sake of it—there was a half-empty box of noole in there, and if the pungent odor was anything to go by, it had expired a few days ago. “And?”

“She couldn’t give me much information, because half of those patients were minors, and even the ones that were of age refused to press charges or mention who did that to them.”

Jess thought about the boy in the alley. Purple veins in his neck, blood leaking out of him. “Of course they did.” She emptied her mug in one long gulp. “Did she say anything about the symptoms? Or the state of the patients when they got there?”

“She didn’t say much about it, but here,” she reached for her bag in the chair, pulled a few files out, like some creepier version of Mary Poppins, “she gave me some copies of their medical records.”

Jessica stopped refilling her mug, brow furrowed. “She _gave_ you the copies?” Last time she checked, that was a little illegal.

She could see Trish biting back a smirk, and some twisted part of her wished all this crap didn’t feel so irritatingly _natural_.

 _That_ was also unsettling.

“It took a little convincing and some cash, but…”

“Sure.” That pill was easier to swallow.

Trish hesitated for a second or two before stepping closer, spreading the folders on Jessica’s desk so they could have a good a look at it. Jess ignored the basics (name, age, race; she couldn’t worry about that right now) and skipped straight to the symptoms. Anything that could tie these patients to the boy in the alley would be a win.

Needle marks. Trouble breathing. Intoxication. Drug in their blood. Internal bleeding. Hemorrhage. Convulsion.

“Shit,” Jess said under her breath. Something twisted behind her belly button.

“What’s wrong?”

Jess shook her head, her mouth felt dry. “Nothing.”

“You’re on edge.”

Jess scoffed, she couldn’t help it. “As opposed to?”

“ _Jess_.”

Jesus. It was really goddamn _impossible_ to ignore Trish.

She sucked her bottom lip into her mouth. “I found a body. In an alley. A young boy with needle marks and blood everywhere. Probably another victim of Psycho Scientist Number Ten.” She took a gulp of her whiskey. Straight from the bottle this time. “They’re dumping bodies now, Trish. I wouldn’t be surprised to find Mattie's body in a dumpster somewhere.”

“Oh my God,” was Trish’s response because there wasn’t much else to say.

“And there’s more,” since all this shit kept oozing from everywhere until the stench was so strong Jessica couldn’t breathe anymore. “His head was in a pool of blood. I didn’t touch the body but I’d assume his skull was smashed when they dropped him from one of the rooftops.”

Trish made a noise that was half a groan and half a gag. “Why would they do that?”

There was a single flash of purple behind Jessica’s eyelids, and then she was biting into her tongue so hard she could taste blood. “To make it look like a suicide.”

Silence fell upon them for two minutes too long. Or maybe Jess was just unable to hear anything over the ringing in her ears.

“What kind of person does something like that?”

Jess could feel the pressure building up behind her eyes, hear her heart knocking against the inside of her skull. Everything around her was slowing down, and she needed to focus on something else, anything else, before she lost it.

“Well, they’re experimenting on kids, so I wouldn’t say I’m surprised,” she forced herself to say as she gathered all the files together, sticking them into one of her folders—it was worn out and ragged, like everything else in her life, but somewhat still useful.

“Do you think they could be doing this to send a message?” Trish piped up. Jess didn’t have to look at her to know she had her concentration face on, which consisted essentially of furrowed brows and blue eyes that were too intense to look into.

“Message?” asked Jess, placing the folder back on her shelf.

“I mean, you said it yourself; it starts to get dangerous when we’re getting closer to the truth. So maybe they’re sending a message for us to stop…?”

Well, Trish was nailing this paranoia thing.

“Maybe,” she said, plopping down in her chair. “But the body was too well hidden.”

“You found it.” And the subtle tinge of pride in Trish’s statement was misplaced. Somehow, they were way past that now.

“By accident.”

“Where were you?”

There was no point in hiding it from Trish anymore. They were in this together now, whether Jessica liked it or not. Jess fished the flash drive from her back pocket. “I went to Harlem to get this.” Trish opened her mouth, her eyebrows shooting up. “Yeah, and if you say a word about it we’re gonna test the theory that cats always land on their feet.”

She smiled. The first honest smile she had given since… _That Night_. Jess had hoped it would make her angry, but instead it put a knot in her throat and made her chest clench.

“I’ve already tested that,” said Trish, tone light. “It worked 85% of the time.”

Jess twisted her eyebrows. “Good to know.”

Se plugged in the flash drive and waited for her computer to load all the files. There were _too many_ videos and PDF documents, so Jess supposed it would take a while.

“What do we do now?”

Her hair was starting to dry, which reminded her that her jeans were still drenched and _thank God_ she didn’t get sick like other people did, or she would have caught a nasty cold. “I got a name. Gary gave it to me.”

“You said he didn’t tell you anything.” She wasn’t exactly complaining, but Jess could hear the slight betrayal in her voice, which was a little ironic, all things considered.

“Yeah, well, I’m sorry if trusting you isn’t exactly a priority for me right now,” she barked back, voice acid. A single tremor travelled through her body and then her nerves stilled again.

Trish was silent for one, two, three seconds. “I deserved that.”

Knowing _that_ didn’t make any of _this_ one bit easier.

“He said I should talk to Laney Hayness but, conveniently, I couldn’t find anything online.”

“What if he was lying?”

Jess nodded, watching the last few files pop up on her screen. “I considered that, but I’ve seen that name before. Hopefully in one of these documents.”

115 documents—in one folder, only. There were at least another 13 folders, plus the one meant for Luke, which she truly didn’t want to open. This shit was going to take a lifetime or two.

Trish was sitting on the couch now, uncharacteristically quiet. For some ungodly reason, it was freaking Jessica out.

“We both know you have an opinion or whatever. Spill it out.”

She linked her fingers together in her lap. “Why did Reva collect all those files?”

“I didn’t have time to interview her before I killed her.” Jess opened a random video. Watched some doctor stick a gigantic needle into some kid’s spine. The audio was in Japanese, and therefore not really helpful.

“I know. But have you ever wondered that?”

Jess tried another one. This one was in French. _Goddamnit_. “A couple times.”

The third video was British. Jess listened for a while before concluding it was mostly a waste of time. It would take days to find the right video and they were running against the clock.

“And?” Trish pressed, leaning forward on the couch, noticeably more interested in the whole thing than she should be.

Jessica reached for her bottle of whiskey and took a swig, leaning back in her seat. “I don’t know. At first, I thought it was all about Luke, to explain something to him or whatever.” She swallowed, ignoring the hot bile in her throat. “But I think she was actually trying to shut the whole thing down. All of it. If she was involved in the studies she could easily get her hands on the recordings. And later expose them.”

“Then why didn’t she?”

“To protect Luke.” The pressure behind her eyes was getting stronger, her vision becoming blurred. “Exposing them would also expose him. What he was, and who he used to be. It wasn’t up to her to decide who saw these files."

Out of her peripherals, she saw Trish nod lightly, leaning back on the couch. “That’s understandable.”

“But I don’t think she ever really gave up,” Jess continued, not wanting to dwell on the irony of what Trish had just said because this week was getting more and more draining with every passing second. “That’s why she buried it. So one day Luke could dig it up and decide for himself what he wanted to do with it.”

“But Kilgrave got to it first.” Trish’s voice was somewhere between a lament and an apology.

Jessica’s whole body, from scalp to toe, wanted to shiver at the mention of his name. But she didn’t. _I won_. “He knew. Somehow.”

Trish ran a hand over her face. “But now we can catch them and finish what she started.”

Jess hadn’t thought about it that way, and she wasn’t sure if it was even _fair_. She bit the inside of her cheek. “That’s the plan.”

 _If_ they were lucky enough to solve this before all the other kids died.

Trish rubbed her eyes with the heel of her hands. “It’s getting late. We should get some sleep.”

Jess leaned forward, opening another video. “I’m fine.”

“You’re _not_ ,” Trish stressed, laying as much emphasis on the last word as possible. “When was the last time you slept?”

Jessica chose not to answer that. Partly because she couldn’t exactly remember the last time she had slept through the night (there had been this one time she had woken up at Oscar’s place at midday after going to bed at eleven the night before, and she had drunk a cup of coffee instead of Red Bull or whiskey and had some toast, but she couldn’t remember _when_ ). And partly because arguing with Trish was more pointless than teaching fishes to walk.

“There’s no time. I need to figure this thing out,” she said anyway just for the sake of it.

“We’ll be able to think better after taking some rest. It’s almost four in the morning.” Trish was already on her feet, removing her scarf and stuffing it into her bag. _Oh_. So she was planning to stay for the night.

Closing the video, Jess said, “You take the bed. I’ll stay on the couch.”

She nodded. “You should take a shower, by the way.”

Jess made a face. “What?”

“You were soaking wet when you got here,” she offered in lieu of an answer. “See you in the morning.”

For the record, today had been a fucking awkward day.

 

 

* * *

 

 

There was a moment when Jessica woke up every morning where her body would freeze and she would lie still, with her eyes open, trying to assimilate her surroundings. It was short-lived, never lasting more than a couple of seconds, but there was always this underlying fear that she wouldn’t be able to leave the bed unless she was told to.

Today, when she woke up, she was on the floor. Actually, she woke up _because_ she hit the floor. The back of her head protesting the impact and sending stabs of pain down her neck and injured shoulder. For someone with enhanced healing that shit that surely taking its sweet little time healing itself.

She heard footsteps coming from her room.

“Jess, are you okay?”

From this angle, Trish was standing upside down, her blonde hair was up in a slicked ponytail. She looked more like the Trish Jessica used to know, despite the gym pants and sneakers.

Jess’s stomach rolled over, and she closed her eyes for a moment, her tongue thick in her mouth. “Yeah, I just... forgot I was on the couch.”

Although she couldn’t see Trish’s face right now, she was sure she hadn’t bought that poor excuse of a lie.

“I went out and got breakfast,” Trish announced, walking again to God knew where.

Jess stayed on the floor a little longer, feeling everything around her spin to a standstill. “Shit. What time is it?”

“It’s barely nine.”

“Shit,” she said again, pushing herself up to her feet. “You should’ve woken me up.”

In the bathroom, she peed, and washed the sleep away from her eyes, while Trish hummed softly in the kitchen—at least this time there was an _actual_ hum coming from her kitchen, not some goddamn ghost or hallucination insistently singing the lyrics to _Ain’t We Got Fun_ in a torturous loop. So maybe, _maybe_ , this thing, as twisted as it might be, was a step towards better.

“There’s coffee and bagels in the kitchen. It’s still warm,” Trish said as Jess exited the bathroom.

“Since when do you eat that crap?”

“I don’t. But you do.”

Huh. Whatever. It was too early to dwell on anything.

Jess moved into the kitchen to get a mug of coffee. It was black coffee, with no sugar and no cream, exactly the way Jessica liked it. There were words rolling around her tongue that tasted too much like a ‘ _thank you’_ , but she wasn’t quite ready for that yet. Not right now. Not _after_.

“I saw Oscar and Vido on my way out,” Trish started, voice low, speculative.

Scratch that, none of this was okay.

She continued, “He was worried about you. Said you didn’t answer his call last night.”

“What did you tell him?” Because Trish wasn’t exactly good at this coming up with an excuse thing.

“I told him that’s a thing you do.” There was a tinge of amusement in her voice. Jessica closed her hands into fists anyway.

“Great. Thanks.” She took a bite of her bagel. It was obnoxiously tasty.

“He seems to really like you. His son, too.”

Jessica sighed as something in her gut stirred. “It’s not like that.”

In all honesty, Jessica had absolutely no idea what she was doing, about anything. And people around her seemed to think she did, and expect her to have answers, or to solve things, and she had been _trying_ to get her shit together, to establish some kind of routine, because Trish, Malcolm, and now Oscar, kept repeating it would help her get better, like generally better, as in healthier and shit, but so far it had been elusive.

It wasn’t like she had expected a different outcome.

But Oscar and Vido _helped_. Somehow, in their always cheerful and annoyingly talkative way, they helped. They were easy. Everything about them was easy. And she liked that.

She also liked the fact that she didn’t have to explain or make sense of whatever was going on between them. Which brought her back to the problem at hand, because Trish was asking;

“Why not?”

“Can we not talk about Oscar right now? In case you can’t remember, we’re trying to track down a murderer.” She laid her mug of coffee on the desk and opened the lid of her laptop, waiting for the thing to load so she could go back to hunting this Hayness person.

She wasn’t even getting paid for this shit and it was slowly sucking the life out of her.

Trish disappeared into the bathroom for a few minutes during which Jessica pretended she wasn’t there and focused solely on the videos and files and the taste of coffee. But before she could actually enjoy that, Trish was back with her phone in her hand and creases between her eyebrows.

She sat down on the couch, breathed quietly for a few seconds, then asked, “How is Malcolm doing?”

Jess ignored the shiver that travelled down her spine, forcing her to sit tighter. “I don’t know,” she replied curtly.

“You don’t know? He lives on the same floor as you, Jess.”

“So does another 30 people, it doesn’t mean I go around knocking on their doors asking about their day.”

Jess decided to try a different strategy, because watching videos wouldn't get them anywhere. She opened one of the PDF documents. There was a table with three columns. The first containing a list of surnames while the other two listed numbers and what seemed to be company names, or maybe names given to certain experiments (which, what was it with evil people and stupid aliases). The numbers represented how much each person had donated to the researches, in crescent order. Jess began to mentally read them all.

“It wasn’t his fault, you know,” Trish continued. She had never been one to know when to shut the hell up, and she was surely not about to start now. Jessica said nothing. “What happened… It was all me. He thought he was helping me, and helping you. He didn’t know.”

“I don’t care.”

She _did_ care about the anger brewing in her core. They were on thin ice.

There was exasperation in Trish’s voice when she said, “You shouldn’t direct your anger towards him. It’s not fair.”

“ _God damn it_ , could you mind your own damn business for once?” she snapped, and the ice broke.

But Trish did not seem affected by that in the slightest. She had known Jessica for 17 years. None of Jessica's endless flaws came as a surprise anymore.

It was silent for a moment. Then, “I need to show you something.”

Nothing good ever followed that statement, so Jess braced herself.

“Here,” Trish said, showing Jessica a text message on her phone. “I received these earlier this morning.”

Two text messages stared back at Jessica. The first only said ‘ _Stop digging’_ . The second said _‘Or else’_ and had a picture attached to it. A picture of Malcolm and Trish. On the cover of that goddamn magazine.

The noise that left Jessica’s throat was half a scoff half a groan because seriously, they didn’t have _time_ for this. “Amateurs.”

Trish blinked several times, quickly, as if she was trying to get something out of her eyes. “Okay, but am I the only one concerned that they sent _me_ this message?”

Jessica scowled at her. “Does Hellcat have a special line or something?”

Trish cocked her head to one side. “I mean, they _know_ it’s me.”

Jess really could not, for the life of her, contain her eye roll. “Of course they do.”

“Excuse me?”

She exhaled sharply. “You were the last person to be seen with doctor Malus before he blew up. It doesn’t take a genius to put two and two together.”

“Well, it took you long enough.”

“No it didn’t. I just didn’t want to admit it.”

It was then that she found it, the goddamn name she had been hunting for hours.

“Got them!” She focused on how much they had donated. “They gave a shitton of money to experiments happening in Seagate and other shady prisons, some of them were on the West coast. Here also lists some extra funds but doesn’t say where they were directed to."

Trish’s breath was on Jessica’s neck. Surprisingly, it didn’t bother her as much as she thought it should. “Wait, Hayness? Her first name... what is it again?”

“Laney. Why?”

“As in Laney _‘American Dream’_ Hayness?”

Jess turned in her chair. It was barely eleven in the morning and her brain was still foggy. “What the hell are you talking about?”

Trish walked around the table, taking the seat in front of Jessica. And Jess could see it, that dangerous sparkle in her eyes that always appeared when she knew what she was talking about. “Okay, the Hayness family. They were the owners of a fertility clinic that was a hit in the 90’s. They were the pioneers in genetic engineering. But the clinic was forced to close, I guess, when some kids started to be born with degenerative diseases.”

Jessica was still stuck on _‘genetic engineering’_ because if the facts were correct then they were dealing with something _way_ bigger than it was a minute ago. Illegal experimentation was a thing. Impregnating women with mutant genes was a whole different beast and Jessica was… she didn’t fucking know. So maybe _numb_ was the proper feeling—or lack thereof.

“So what they basically created kids in labs and stuck them into random strangers’ uteruses?”

“Yeah, basically.” Jess could see the moment it clicked inside Trish’s head. The pure horror in her eyes, making them turn from blue to a solid grey. “You really think they did to babies what they did to us?”

Jess opened her mouth. Shut it again. “I’m not a mutant.”

Trish’s brow furrowed in a really irritating way and Jess wished she could press mute on people. “Uh, they changed our entire genetic code, Jess.”

Her insides turned frigid. “Whatever. How do you know all that stuff, anyway? You were barely a kid.”

“I was thirteen,” Trish corrected, as if thirteen wasn’t a kid. Although to Dorothy, she had never been. “I heard conversations on set. All my mother and her colleagues did was gossip.”

Well, that explained why Jessica hadn't been able to find anything about this family online. They had probably covered their traces and swept all evidence under the rug, and set the rug on fire.

“Then maybe they’re still operating under a different name,” Jess speculated.

“Like a shell corporation?”

“Or a cover up.” Which could be literally anything. From pet shops to restaurants to freaking hair salons.

Trish looked like she had touched the sun and it was burning her body all the way to the bones. “If that’s the case… how many people with abilities there are out there?”

Jess inhaled deeply. “I honestly cannot think about that right now, Trish. I need to track back all the Hayness family tree and find someone to talk to who hasn’t disappeared.”

Trish bit her bottom lip, eyes dropping to the floor. When she looked up again, her eyes were far too innocent. “What are we gonna do about the Malcolm situation?”

Jessica opened the drawer and fetched her notepad, scribbling down Hogarth’s new address. She ripped out the page and held it out for Trish to take.

“What’s this?”

“Hogarth’s new firm’s address. Malcolm is working with her, and Cheng. You’ll find him there.”

The blood drained from Trish’s face. It was a very unusual thing to happen. “Wait, me?”

Jess shrugged. “I kind of have enough on my plate right now.”

“Jess, I haven’t spoken to him since…” she trailed off.

“Since you two banged?” There was a sourness in her voice, like venom.

Trish stopped. Blinked. “How do you know that?”

“I’m a private investigator,” she said matter-of-factly. “Also, next time you screw someone don’t leave your sunglasses in their bed if you don’t want to get caught.”

Trish squeezed her eyes shut. “Right.”

“Tell him to stay at Hogarth’s safe building for a while. He’s smart he’ll know what to do.” Jess returned her attention to her laptop.

“Are you sure about this?”

Jess glared at her. Hard. “Okay, Here’s rule number one on being a hero: you clean after your own shit. You fucked up, you fix it. That’s on you.”

Trish quietly squirmed inside her own skin, like her body was too tight and she wanted to claw her way out. Jess knew the feeling. “Okay.” She stood up, grabbed her bag and walked to the door. “You text me if you find anything.”

Jess nodded briskly. “Yeah.”

And then she was alone again.

 

 

* * *

 

 

It was an hour later that her phone buzzed with a call from a number Jessica didn’t know. She pressed the phone to her ear.

“Who is this?”

Someone breathed on the other end for a solid minute. Then a weak voice chimed in, “Jessica Jones?”

“Yeah?”

“It’s Laney Hayness.”

 

 

 


	3. Part 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hey, there guys! I hope you all enjoyed the holidays!!
> 
> Here's the penultimate part of the fic, which's the part I had the most fun writing (although I'm sure Jess hated the heartfelt conversations I made her suffer through).
> 
> Heavy warnings for physical abuse, implied sexual assault, and non-consensual drug use in this chapter. (Jess hated those parts, too).
> 
> Anyway, I hope you like it :D

Here’s what Jessica knew about the Haynesses so far: they were full of shit.

For starters, there were two Laneys; the mother Laney and the daughter Laney, which was creepy in and of itself. Plus the only Laney Hayness Jess had been able to find information on was the mother (who had died in the late 90s). The daughter, Laney 2.0, went by Laney _Danvers_ (her father’s surname, she had explained roughly on the other end of the line, breathing ragged, the kind of nervousness that takes over when people are discussing something they shouldn’t). All the info about the rest of the family was extremely restricted—someone had selected what the media should and shouldn’t know, probably. Hogarth had done the same countless times to help her shady clients. Given the scandal about the fertility clinic, it only made sense.

Jessica had had to do a short trip to the city’s registry office and look up thousands of birth certificates with the name Laney or Danvers who had been born in the late 80s or early 90s, and she had no idea those were such popular names in New York until she caught herself sitting on the dusty floor of the office at one in the morning (breaking into that office was far from the worst thing she had done in her life) with no good results.

After, she had had to find the deceased Laney Hayness, which gave Jessica a pinched nerve in her neck and a headache from staring down at files for so long.  From there, she had been able to find Laney’s marriage certificate, which gave Jess the name of the husband: Gerard Danvers. And a second birth certificate told Jessica that Laney 2.0 had a brother, Wyatt Danvers, eight years older than her and, like the rest of his family, the guy could be a ghost if not for that single document proving that he existed.

Moreover, none of that tied the two Laneys to any of those illegal experiments except for their name on that goddamn list.

And Gary was the link between all _that_ and Mattie and the boy in the alley.

It would be great if Jessica could get some sleep right now, before trying to move forward with this, but that would mean giving Trish that tiny victory, and she would die before she let that happen.

So when Laney asked her if she wanted to meet up to talk, Jess promptly said yes.

Whatever. It wasn’t like this case could get much worse.

Jess had just left the shower (her shoulder was still burning like a motherfucker and _goddamn you, Murdock_ ) when a knock came from the door.

“We’re closed,” Jessica shouted, throwing her wet towel on the bed, even though her hair was still dripping and she should do something about it.

“Jessica, it’s me.”

It sure was Malcolm. She was half surprised it had taken him this long.

There was no logical reason for her heart to pound so loudly in her ears when she answered the door, but logical things rarely happened to her, so she decided not to dwell on that.

“What do you want?” she asked a much buffier and short-haired version of the Malcolm she used to know. Something about seeing him in a suit made her stomach churn uncomfortably.

He blinked at her. A figment of her past waved at her in the distance. “Jessica, what is going on?”

It was hard to swallow, she needed whiskey to loosen her muscles and mind. “It’s a wide scope, you’re going to have to be more specific than that.”

He shook his head lightly. “I mean in general.” His voice was a little urgent. Apparently, Jessica passed that on to the people in her life. “Trish told me something about kids dying and drugs, but she didn’t tell me anything else.”

“Because it’s enough. That's all you need to know.”

Malcolm’s face was a mix of incredulity and disappointment and Jessica was used to having that effect on people, but when it came to Malcolm or Trish it still made her want to crawl into one of the small bullet holes in her wall and stay there along with other parasites.

“No. No, you don't get to play that card again,” he shook his head as he said every word, for emphasis. “That’s the problem; that's always been the problem. You can't decide what I need to know or don't.”

Jessica sucked her teeth. “I see working with Hogarth and Cheng has rubbed off on you.”

His eyebrows drew together. “I think it has more to do with having worked with _you._ ” At Jessica’s glare, he amended, “Are you in trouble?”

“Not yet.”

“Is Trish?”

Jess exhaled sharply. “Maybe. I don't know. Haven't got that far yet. Which is why I told you to stay at Hogarth’s. Not to jump headfirst into a sea of sharks and piranhas.”

He blinked again. Twice. “And who are you in this scenario?”

“Someone who's getting seriously pissed off.”

Malcolm squeezed his eyes shut for a moment. When he opened them again, they were softer. “Look, I never meant to do that to you, Jessica. I didn't know what Trish was doing. I seriously thought she just wanted to get that guy arrested. I didn't know anything else, all right?”

It was amazing how people were constantly telling her shit she didn’t want to hear.

“If that’s your apology you suck at it, and if it's an excuse I don't want it.” There was a weight to her voice, like betrayal.

“Okay, I have to be the big person here, because you clearly won't,” Malcolm said, and walked in without being invited and Jessica debated if she should let her rage take over or simply admire him for having the courage to mess with her when she was angry and in a hurry.

He gestured forcefully as he continued, “I can't do this anymore, all right? Walking past you in the hallway and pretending we don't know each other. You're pissed? Okay, I can't change that, but I'm not gonna play this game anymore. You did a lot for me, and I did a lot for you, and I can’t just forget that. Because I do believe you’re a good person, and I actually consider you a friend.”

And that was another thing she hated about Trish and Malcolm; they never gave up. Not even when all cells in their bodies were telling them to. Not even when they knew it was rotten work.

Jessica was incapable of forming a proper answer to that, so what she said once she found her voice somewhere under her tongue was, “Then your good friend needs you to back off and stay at Jeri's for a while. Things are about to get ugly and you don't want to be around to see it.”

He had the nerve to smile. “ _That_ right there,” he said, wagging a finger at her, “That’s something you need to stop saying, as well.”

Jessica grimaced. She couldn’t help it. “And _you_ need to stop with this psychotherapy shit.”

“ _But_ I'm gonna let it slide this time. Because I trust you're doing the right thing.”

Well, that made one of them.

He walked over to the door, then touched a hand to the wall, scanning her office as if it was the first time he was stepping here sober.

Jess frowned. “What?”

He smiled again, faintly this time. Something like longing, or a farewell. “I miss this place.”

Jessica could almost say the same.

 

 

* * *

 

 

Jose’s Diner was located just outside the city, driving up North, on the left side of the road, near a decaying motel and an abandoned theme park (Jessica had stopped counting all the ironies coming out of this case, it was mentally draining and all around exhausting, so she was just going with the flow). The blue leather on the seats was ragged and worn out, and the table cloth was yellow with grease and stains of spilled soda—the kind of place that allowed Jessica to blend right in with the decoration and go unnoticed.

Trish, on the other hand, stuck out like a sore thumb, even in her gym clothes and sunglasses, which Jessica hated to admit was an efficient disguise, despite how dumb she looked.

“Why did we agree to meet her here again?” asked Trish. She had been fidgeting with her scarf for about ten minutes and it was driving Jessica insane.

“I already told you she wanted to meet in a public place.”

Her legs were bouncing under the table, as well. It was obnoxious. “I still think my apartment would’ve been a better option. I have cameras everywhere; we would have her on tape in case she ran away.”

Jessica clicked her tongue. “And why in hell would she run away when _she_ was the one to call me and schedule this meeting to begin with?”

“I don’t know.” She chewed down on her bottom lip for a second. “What if it’s a trap?”

“Wouldn't be the first time I fought in a diner, anyway.” Jess shrugged. There were enough people here for this to be considered _‘public’_ , but not too many for her to have to worry about casualties in case things got out of control. It was merely irritating how Trish seemed to think she hadn’t gone over this plan at least five times in her head before getting in that goddamn car and having the most uncomfortable car ride of her life since… _No_. She was not going to let her mind wander right now. “This was a bad idea.”

Trish turned her head so fast _The Flash_ would be jealous. “That’s what I’m saying.”

“No. I mean you being here.”

Trish set her jaw in a way that made Jessica’s voice die in her throat. She couldn’t help it. It was a knee-jerk reaction. Had been since they were fifteen and it was unnerving how it still worked. “We’re way past that.”

“No, we aren’t,” she argued just for the sake of it. “To be clear, only _I_ will ask questions, all right? You will sit in silence recording the conversation and that will be it. You won’t say anything. Do you understand?”

Her lips were pressed together in a thin line, but she said, “Yeah, okay.”

“I mean it, Trish. She’s too important a lead for us to let her go.”

This time, Trish’s voice was indignant, a bit too loud for Jessica’s taste. “I get it. Don’t worry.”

 _Don’t worry_. Yeah, right. Jessica partly wanted to smack her over the head.

But she didn’t, because a short girl, no bigger than 5' 3", was entering the diner with a cap on her head and clothes that were too large for her. She spotted Jessica easily, waving shyly, and walked over to their table.

“Hey,” Laney said, plopping down on the seat. She didn't meet Jessica’s eyes as she spoke. “Thanks for agreeing to meet me here.” Her hands, Jessica noted, were rubbing her thighs nervously.

“You said you had something to tell me,” Jessica kept her voice as calm as she could manage. This was far easier than talking to caged people in the supermax, but still her guts were heaving.

Laney’s eyes were on Trish. “I’m sorry, who is this?”

Jessica sighed. Sharply. “Don’t mind her. She’s just… a friend. She’s helping with the case.”

Laney blinked. “I didn’t think you would bring company.”

Jess narrowed her eyes slightly. “You didn’t ask me to come alone.”

“Why is she wearing glasses inside?”

 _Christ_. “It’s, uh, an eye condition.” Jessica cleared her throat. “You said you wanted to talk about…”

Laney held Jessica’s glare for a solid three seconds. Her irises were too small. Just a tiny dot in the middle of a sea of green. “Listen, it’s not that your friend can’t hear what I have to tell you it’s just that…” She bit her bottom lip, her breathing becoming slightly uneven. “If my brother is really behind all this, then we shouldn’t get many people involved.”

There was something about this girl that seemed oddly familiar. Jessica just couldn’t put a finger on it.

Trish was stiff beside her. “Don’t worry about that. I’m fine.”

Laney shrugged, but her shoulders were still held tight, too close to her ears. “Well, then, how do we do this?”

Jessica had spoken to people at funerals who demonstrated more enthusiasm than Laney was showing now. She didn’t blame her. Discussing your fucked up family isn't particularly fun. “Well, you can start by telling me how you got my number.” And how she knew Jessica was looking into that case. She hadn’t explained a fucking thing on the phone.

Before Laney could open her mouth to respond, Trish piped in, “I think we should order something.” Jess was sure Trish could see daggers in her eyes, so she amended, “To make us seem less suspicious. We’ve been sitting here for an hour, Jess.”

“I could use some water,” Laney agreed.

Jessica worked her jaw. Sucked her teeth. “Fine.”

Laney ordered a goddamn strawberry milkshake, as if this was a group trip or some bullshit, Trish ordered a medium latte (decaf, with cream, and that was a travesty), and forced Jess to get a normal coffee (black, with no sugar, like it’s supposed to be) because _“Come on, Jess, you haven’t eaten anything in hours, and also have some water”,_ which Jessica had pointedly said _no_ to and then ended up with a bottle of water beside her cup of coffee anyway because that’s just how things were when Trish was around.

In that saying about playing with fire and getting burned, Trish was the fire.

“So you know Gary,” Jessica said, going back to business before Trish proposed a trip to a nearby beach or a picnic or whatever else she could come up with in that blonde head of hers.

Laney slurped her milkshake unnecessarily loud, by the way. “Yes. We met in Boston. He was a Junior in college—MIT, smart kid. And I was working my way through my doctoral degree. We got an internship at the same lab. Different positions, of course, but I helped him out sometimes. We grew close, if you know what I mean.”

“You two dated?” asked Trish, despite Jessica’s persistent reminders that she should keep her mouth shut.

Laney seemed unbothered by the question, her nervousness wearing off as the minutes went by. “Briefly. For a year, only. Then he decided to move back to New York, and we broke up because I couldn’t set foot in that fucking city again.”

Jess felt a thrill in her spine. “Because of your dangerous brother?”

Jessica was well familiar with the fear that surged behind Laney’s eyes. The kind of dull panic that drains the color from your face and sets your nerves on alert. She recognized that look.

“Yes,” Laney said at last, voice cracking. “Wyatt. Wyatt Danvers. The asshole who drove me away from my home. And the asshole who did that to Mattie.”

Jessica swallowed her coffee, glad when the liquid burned her throat all the way down to her stomach. “You sound pretty sure of that.”

Laney nodded forcefully. “Because I _know_ what he’s doing. Gary told me.”

Jess could feel Trish’s eyes on her, boring holes into her goddamn skull. And that was the part she hated about all this; the goddamn expectations. “If that’s the case then why didn’t Gary give me Wyatt’s name instead of yours?”

Laney arched her eyebrows in a way that somehow made Jessica feel quite stupid for asking. “Gary was terrified. He called me in tears. He would never lead you to Wyatt directly, too afraid to end up like Mattie, I suppose.”

Something bit Jessica in the gut. She remembered the guy in the alley. Puke on his face, blood in his mouth. Her coffee tasted too sour all of a sudden.

Jessica breathed deeply, leaning back in her seat. “Mattie. Did you know her?”

She shook her head briskly. “No, ma’am.”

“Jessica,” Jess said, instinctively. She could feel her face twisting into a grimace.

“Jessica, sorry.” Laney slurped her milkshake again. “I didn’t know her personally, but Gary did, as you may already know.”

“Yeah, I do know.”

“He dated her for a while, but one day, around a year ago, he called me and told me she was going out with my brother. I told him to keep her away from him at all costs, that he was bad news, but Mattie didn’t listen, I guess.” She sighed, fiddling with her straw. “He told me about the drugs. That my brother had got Mattie hooked up and all that. That’s how I found out what he was doing. He called me again a few months back telling me they were okay, but clearly he was lying.”

Jessica was chewing the inside of her cheeks. Under the table, on Trish’s lap, her cellphone was recording the whole conversation. “Your brother… Willow?”

“Wyatt.”

“Wyatt, right,” Jess confirmed. There are many ways to catch a liar. A _good_ liar, however, is hard to spot, and even harder to trap. “What’s his deal? Why is he bad news?”

“Because he’s an asshole.” She said that rolling her eyes, but the rage was there, brewing somewhere in Laney’s chest. Somehow, Jessica could feel it. “He and my mother used to abuse the shit out of me when I was a kid. Lock me in a room for hours until I solved complex puzzles or whatever. Beat me up when I did something wrong. Because I had to be _‘special’_.”

Beside Jessica, Trish breathed heavily. “I know the feeling.”

Jess was starting to feel nauseous.

“Why did they want you to be special? Besides the narcissism and sociopathy, of course.”

Laney took a deep breath. Outside, the sun was starting to set and Jessica was growing more and more agitated for some reason. An urge to escape rising in her core. She silenced it with more coffee, since alcohol wasn’t an option here.

“That’s what my mother _always_ wanted. Not just for me but for all kids. That’s why she had that clinic, to make _‘special’_ babies. Babies who would grow up to be athletes or musicians or whatever their parents wanted them to be. She would create them in a lab and stick them into their greedy mothers’ womb and pat herself on the back for creating, what, fucking robots? Who knows.”

Trish was horrifyingly quiet beside Jessica. She really wanted this to be over sooner rather than later.

“But something went wrong, didn’t it?” Jess incited, poking the bear with a stick. “And the place had to be shut down.”

Laney smiled in a way that was too odd. More bitter than anything. The hairs on the back of Jess’s neck stood on end. “Yes, the ‘ _Clinic Scandal’_. Sure.” Laney literally air-quoted that and whatever respect Jessica was trying to nourish for this girl flew straight out of the window. “Babies started to be born with degenerative diseases. Parents sued my family. My mom couldn’t handle the pressure and the shame. Then she hung herself in our basement. And that’s my tragic backstory.”

Trish brought the tips of her fingers to her lips. She looked paler than usual. Jess didn’t blame her. It was when shit got personal that things got ugly.

“Crazy mothers do seem to be a trend around here,” Jess said, and immediately regretted it because Laney looked like someone had kicked her in the crotch and Trish looked like she was one bad word away from throwing up. “Anyway, what happened to you and your family after that?”

Laney shook her head, as if snapping herself back to reality. “My father claimed he didn’t know shit about that. Of course, being such a good lawyer as he was, the media and the jury believed him. I believe him, too.” She paused, fixed her cap on her head. “My father made sure all information about the scandal got wiped out permanently, and erased our connection to my mother. It's like she never existed.” Her voice had got lower, wandering. She pulled her attention back. “My dumpster of a brother bought a club downtown with the money our mother left him—Purple Diamond, is what it’s called. I finished high school in a private school and then moved to Boston. Eventually, people just let the scandal die, like everything else they claim to care about for a week and then just forget forever.”

Jessica’s tongue was thick in her mouth. “But your brother never forgot. So he started selling those drugs.”

“Yes.”

“Why? To finish what your mother started?”

Laney laughed like a dog with asthma might. “No, he could never do that. He’s as dumb as a brick. I mean, he _is_ selling those drugs, but someone else is making them for him. But that’s something I can’t help you with.”

Trish was looking at her sideways. Jessica knew she would spill out a lot of crap once they were alone in the car. “Why did you decide to contact me now?”

Laney looked up at her, slightly alarmed. “Excuse me?”

Jess shrugged, linking her hands together on the table. “You’ve known about your brother’s plans for over a year. Why did you contact me now?”

Laney’s glance dropped to the filthy black and white floor. She fiddled with the zipper on her jacket for a moment. “I was too frightened to come forward about this whole thing before. Exposing him would expose myself, link myself to that family again, and I didn’t want that. I didn’t want to go back…” her voice died in her throat. Jessica let it stay dead. She knew a lot about digging up your shitty past and having to deal with the aftermath later. She was in no position to judge Laney.

“What made you change your mind?” asked Trish, voice light.

Laney smiled thinly. “When Mattie… died…” she breathed in, then out. “Gary called me again and told me someone was looking into the case. A private investigator. He told me that was my chance to do something about it and stay hidden at the same time. I finally had a chance to redeem myself. It took me a while but… I decided to trust you.”

Jessica said nothing. And for once, neither did Trish.

Laney checked the time on her watch. “God, it’s late. I should head back to Boston, now.”

Jessica nodded, strangely relieved. “Yeah. You’ve done enough.”

Laney opened her mouth, exhaled. “Uh, just one last thing.” She wet her lips. “If you ever speak to Mattie’s sister again, could you just tell her that I’m… that I’m sorry I couldn’t help her sister? That I’m sorry I wasn’t brave enough to talk to someone sooner? Please?”

Jessica honestly could not function right now. So Trish replied instead.

“Sure. We’ll do that.”

“Thanks.”

In a matter of seconds, she disappeared behind the door.

 

 

* * *

 

 

It took Trish all of ten seconds to start speaking after they got on the road, under the dark sky and a drizzle. Jessica’s anxiety had somewhat decreased since the conversation with Laney, so it didn't bother her too much when Trish asked:

“So, do you think we can trust Laney?”

Jessica was looking out the window, keeping her focus on the row of trees along the road. “I don’t know. But she gave us the name of his club and now we can get his address, so we go with plan C.”

Trish frowned. “Plan C? What happened to plan A and B?”

Jess shrugged. “Plan A was when I thought Gary was guilty. Plan B was when I thought Laney was. And now plan C—Wyatt.”

Trish’s lips were shaped into a close-mouthed smile when Jessica looked at her. “That’s fair,” she said. “The black sheep of the family.”

Jessica scoffed. “They’re all black sheep.”

It was quiet for a moment. Then, “What Laney said about not being able to help Mattie… I feel that way, too.”

Jessica’s insides went cold. “Don’t. Okay?”

“I was right there, Jess. Maybe if I had grabbed Mattie instead of fighting those guys…” Jess could hear her swallow. “I could have saved her.”

 _Jesus_. This goddamn week just kept kicking and punching and the hits kept on coming.

“I’m not gonna make you feel better about that, okay?” Jess said, voice somewhere between a bark and a grunt. “First because I shouldn’t, and second because I can’t.”

Trish didn’t get the hint. “I just keep seeing her face when I close my eyes.”

Jessica took a sharp intake of breath, all her organs shuffling out of place.

_(For a fraction of a second all Jessica could see was Alisa’s face, blood seeping through the bullet hole in her forehead and spreading freaking everywhere—on the floor of the gondola, under Jessica’s fingernails, soaking her jeans..._

_“Maybe I don‘t have to be special. Maybe I just made you.”)_

Jessica swallowed the bile back down. Brought her attention back to the road ahead. “Yeah. The sight of her head blowing up is also quite hard to forget.”

Trish flinched. Literally, physically shrinking into herself. “Sorry.”

Guilt was the _last_ thing Jessica should be feeling right now. Logically, she knew that. But something about shutting Trish up like that put a knot in her stomach and stabbed her in the gut repeatedly. She wanted to shrink into herself, too.

“Listen, shit happens, okay?” she started, voice thick. “Sometimes they happen to you, sometimes they happen because of you. In this line of work, it’s usually the latter.”

Trish pushed air out of her nose. “So I should just get used to seeing dead people?”

Jessica’s mouth turned down. She wanted to shrug, but her body refused to move. “Yeah. Actually, yeah.”

Trish was grimacing. It looked odd on her. “How’s that advice working out for you so far?”

Jessica merely snorted.

“The good news is, at some point all faces blend into one large puddle of blood and you can’t tell them apart anymore.”

“Thank you,” came Trish’s reply.

Jess turned her head to face Trish. “I told you I couldn’t make you feel better ‘bout that.”

The corner of Trish’s lips curled up slightly. “I mean it. Thank you.”

Jessica listened. She didn’t absorb the words, but she listened.

 

 

* * *

 

 

Midtown Manhattan was one of the many places in New York that had suffered the most damage when the Incident hit, in 2012. The street where Wyatt Danver’s apartment was located was somewhere between completely ruined and partly inhabitable. With holes in the pavement and stores that looked like they were barely holding up.

The apartment itself—not too tall, simple design with floor-to-ceiling windows, and no doorman—didn’t look like a place someone from a rich family would like to live in. Trish’s penthouse looked far fancier in comparison and it had _‘a_ _minimalist style, Jess, it’s not as expensive as it looks’_. Perhaps the reason he had chosen this place was so that he could hide in plain sight. He hadn’t got this far by being dumb.

“You sure this is it?” asked Trish and— _what the actual fuck._

She had changed clothes, somehow, at some point after Jessica left the car and crossed the street to have a better look of the building—currently, Jess was debating whether they should go in undercover as a member of the staff, or break through the back door, or, on the off chance there was no security, just break through the window. Trish’s gym clothes had been discarded somewhere, and she now wore her goddamn yellow-and-blue spanx with that stupid beanie on her head and those ridiculous sunglasses (which Jessica was sure was very impractical during a fight, by the way, not to mention that a punch gone wrong could leave you blind, but whatever, to each their own).

Jessica looked her over. “Were you wearing this thing under your clothes this whole time or did you get naked in the car?”

Jess could tell Trish was throwing daggers at her with her glare even though she couldn’t see her eyes. “I was wearing this under my clothes. For practicality.”

“Huh.”

“Make fun of it all you want, but it’s actually easier to move and fight in these than normal clothes, believe me.” She fixed the scarf around her neck, pulling it up to her nose to cover the bottom half of her face.

“Thanks for the advertisement, still not buying it.” Jessica decided that jumping through the window was definitely the best option.

“How do we know he’s not home?”

Jess shrugged, walking around to the back of the building. Trish followed. “We don’t.”

“I’m serious, Jess.”

“So am I. If he’s in there we deal with him, if he isn’t we just look for proof of his voodoo bullcrap and get the shit out of there.” Considering he owned a club in the Upper East Side, Jessica was convinced he wouldn’t be here at this hour. It was barely midnight.

“How do we get in?” Trish was whispering. If she decided to come up with code names for them, Jess wouldn’t be surprised.

“What, so you can’t fly? Bummer.” Jessica deadpanned, preparing to jump.

“I can climb,” Trish’s voice said from behind her.

“Good. Then you should begin.” And with that she took off into the air, landing harshly on Wyatt’s balcony. (She banged her knee on the ground. Hard. Exactly where the rip in her jeans left her leg exposed. She could see blood smearing over her scraped skin. Great).

Without wasting more time, Jessica broke the lock on the door and swiftly slipped inside. Everything was too quiet, too silent, so Jess ventured deeper in, poking her head around doors just to make sure she was alone. After concluding that fighting Wyatt wasn’t going to happen right now, she started to look for actual evidence of the story his sister had told them.

When she walked back into the living room, Trish was standing by the door.

“You’re late,” said Jess, walking over to the shelf and sorting through books and folders.

“Show off,” Trish responded, but she sounded amused, Jessica thought. “What are we looking for, exactly?”

“I don’t know. That’s how we find something.”

“Uh, not helping, Jess.” 

“Just—look for something that either confirms or denies what Laney told us. Anything.”

In the folders, she found family pictures. Not the best place to keep family stuff, probably. But Jessica didn’t know what the etiquette for trashy families was. There were pictures of Mother Laney when she was young, with baby Laney in her arms. Pictures of Mother Laney with Wyatt and baby Laney. In some other pictures, they looked older. Wyatt looked like a prepubescent child and Laney 2.0 looked around six or eight, although her clothes were meant to make her look older—long dresses, slicked ponytail, not a single hair out of place, shiny shoes, and lipstick. They were smiling, and for just a second, Mother Laney’s face flashed into Dorothy’s and Jessica almost dropped the pictures.

Jess had seen Trish and Dorothy pose for cameras as a perfect family for years. Only she knew where the bruises were on Dorothy’s golden child. The things the camera couldn’t capture.

“Jess?” Trish asked from somewhere in the room. “Did you find something?”

Jessica blinked a few times, her vision blurred. “Nothing important.” She shoved the files back on the shelf with more force than necessary. “I’ll go check his room.”

Wyatt’s bedroom was no bigger than Jessica’s, but it was considerably messier. His floor was a mix of smelly clothes, unfinished meal boxes, old DVD covers of porn movies, and empty booze bottles (there were also some crumpled tissues tossed around the floor, which, after glancing at the porn DVD’s, Jessica definitely did _not_ want to touch). His closet was wide open and a few clean clothes poked out casually, along with shoe boxes and ties. In his bathroom, bottles of deodorant were found on the floor and his toothbrush was left on the sink, carelessly. Apparently, personal hygiene wasn’t a priority here.

“Any luck?” Trish called out from the door, still keeping her voice low.

Jessica entered the room again. “Not yet.”

“How do we even find anything in this place?” Trish honestly couldn’t mask the disgust right now. It was all over her face.

“I’ve found shit in worse places before.” It was when Jessica walked past his bed—his sheets smelled like sex and beer, it was truly disgusting—that she stepped on something that shouldn’t be there. A loose floorboard. “What the—” Jess crouched down, bending over so she could look under the bed.

“What?” Trish asked, urgently.

“Not sure yet.” Jess reached a hand under the bed, feeling blindly for the right floorboard. “Got it.” She pulled the thing off effortlessly and reached inside, fetching a cardboard box. Sitting cross-legged on the floor, she opened it, revealing a series of much darker and disturbing pictures. “Shit.”

Trish was beside her a second later, kneeling down to have a better view of the pictures Jessica was staring at with raw incredulity.

They were all _too young_ , the people in the pictures. Young boys and girls with needles in their arms and necks, puke over their shirt, and blood coming out of their ears and noses. Some of them, the younger ones, seemed to be somewhere dark, with hospital beds scattered around and IV’s near their bodies. Some others (they looked older than the teens, probably in their mid-20s) seemed to be at a club. They were at a much better shape, but some of the girls had their skirt pulled up or their tops pulled down, and their panties and bras were visible in the pictures. Their veins popping out under their bruised skin. In some pictures, they were seen swallowing tiny round purple pills. In most pictures, they were unconscious.

“Oh my God,” was what Trish said because there wasn’t much else to say. “Laney was right.”

Jessica couldn’t breathe right. “And now we can prove it.” She pulled her phone out of her back pocket, and began to snap pictures of the pictures. She wanted the real thing to be exactly where she found it when the police arrived here. But not before she beat the crap out of this guy first, and forced him to talk.

Misty Knight was surely gonna appreciate it.

Once she was done, she stuffed the box back under the floorboard and rushed Trish out of his room towards the balcony.

“Where do we go now? The club?”

“Yup. Find the bastard and make him talk. We still need to know who he is selling for.”

As soon as they set foot on the balcony, a shadow brushed past Jessica’s shoulder and stopped the near the wall. Trish screamed behind her. A single, loud yelp jumping out of her throat before she covered her mouth to muffle the noise.

“God damn it, Trish, calm the hell down,” Jess said sternly. “Use your cat senses or whatever.”

“I don’t have cat senses,” she retorted, voice still stifled.

Jessica ignored her, turning to the other asshole in a spandex suit, who seemed to be quite into following her around. “And _you_ stop with your Batman shit. What do you want now?”

There was blood on the corner of his lips, Jessica noticed. It made something cold settle in the pit of her stomach. “I found the children.”

Jessica straightened her shoulders. “Where?”

“I can show you.”

Jesus. He never gave up his cryptic shit did he?

“Shit, now?” Jessica said, running a hand through her hair. “We were on our way to get the asshole behind all this.”

Murdock tipped his head. “So you found him.”

“Yeah. Kind of.”

Trish cleared her throat. “I could go get the kids while you go after Wyatt.”

“No,” Jess said immediately. “No way.” That was the _only_ thing Jessica was sure of: she wouldn’t let Trish out of her sight.

“Jessica,” said Murdock. It was like hearing her name straight from the devil’s mouth—which, _yeah_ , okay, whatever. “I’ll handle the kids. You and your friend finish what you came here for.”

He was ready to jump off when Jessica said, “Wait. Let’s say, hypothetically, that something goes wrong and Wyatt finds out about our plan. What am I supposed to do, signal your name in the sky with neon?”

He actually chuckled at that. “If something goes wrong I’ll know. Don’t worry.”

People needed to stop telling her not to worry. It only made her worry more.

“Uh, what just happened?” Trish asked when Murdock disappeared into the darkness again, her eyes wide.

“Why are you asking me? I never know what the hell he’s doing.” Jessica wasn’t sure _he_ knew. “Come on, let’s go find Wyatt.”

 

 

* * *

 

 

Upper East Side, home to the rich, and obnoxious, and that overhyped TV show which had more seasons than a show like that should be allowed to. That summarized everything Jessica knew about this place. And pretty much everything she wanted to know, really.

Purple Diamond was situated somewhere in the Upper East Side, and—surprise!—even the richer corner of the city still hid dark, stinky alleys with empty beer bottles and too many dirty secrets to count. Jessica had taken many pictures of cheating spouses around here. The richer they were, the bigger the scandal, the more they paid for the job.

The club, like the name implied, had purple walls and a giant diamond on the roof, glowing red-purple-magenta in the most offensive way, and it took Jessica a minute too long to notice that her jaw was clenched too tight and her breathing was just a little too shallow and her eyes couldn’t look away from the walls.

( _Jessica. Jessica! JESSICA! Get back here, Jessica. Now, Jessica!_ )

“Jess?” a different voice said. Jessica jumped in her seat, slamming her head against the closed window of Trish’s car.

Trish was staring at her with concern in her eyes. “Are you okay?”

When she blinked, her eyes felt damp. Jess pushed her voice out with her tongue. “Yeah. Just…” _Shit._ “Maybe you should wait in the car.”

Trish’s expression went from deeply worried to utterly annoyed in 0.2 seconds. It was truly impressive. “I’m finishing this with you.” She crossed her arms to make a point, as if that would prevent Jessica from arguing anyway.

“They’re selling drugs in there, Trish. So maybe this isn’t the best place for a recovering addict to be.”

Her eyes were tender again when he said, “I’m not gonna touch that stuff again.”

Jessica sharpened her teeth and let ice leak into her voice as she said, “What if it makes you stronger, or faster? It could happen. Drug grants normal people some powers, it could enhance the abilities of those who are already skilled. Ever thought about that?”

Trish pretended to ponder for a moment. “Tempting,” she said and, honestly, _goddamn her_ for saying that in the most nonchalant way imaginable.

“Great. You stay in the damn car.” Jessica made to open the door, but Trish’s hand was on her arm a second later, a touch so soft she could barely even feel it. Jess stopped moving regardless, sinking back into her seat.

“I mean it, Jess. I’m not gonna get near those drugs.” Jessica said nothing, just arched her eyebrows at her. “I learned my lesson—finally.” A soft, self-deprecating laugh fell out of her mouth. “I’m not gonna make the same mistake again. I promise.”

It hurt. It really fucking _hurt_ that Jess was finding it so hard to trust Trish again.

Jess worked her jaw. “That’s the problem; you’re not exactly in control of that.”

Trish retracted her hand, crossed her arms over her chest. Something flashed in her eyes as she said, “I am. I don’t ever want to relapse again and I _won’t_.”

There was something swimming in Jessica’s stomach, like a shark or a snake. Jess could all but anticipate the bite, the stinging feeling in her flesh. Still, what left her mouth was, “Stay close to me. Do only what I tell you to do.”

“All right.”

Predictably, there were three bodyguards at the front door of the club, all of which stared at Trish as if she were something to eat. Granted, in her silver party dress, heavy makeup, and iron curled hair, Trish looked like the celebrity she had buried seven feet underground when she was 20. Which was kind of exactly what they were going for.

Trish had insisted that Jessica take something from her wardrobe when they stopped at her penthouse about an hour ago to get rid of that ridiculous (and overly suspicious) spanx. Which Jessica had denied because everything in there was either 1) more expensive than anything Jessica owned 2) too shiny and attention-drawing 3) both things in one.

_(“How about that dress in the left corner?” Trish had suggested, while zipping up her own dress. “It’s black, and simple, and not at all revealing.”_

_“No.”_

_“Could you at least try it on?”_

_“I’d actually rather die.”_

_“We’re going to an Upper East Side club, Jess. People will notice if you arrive there in a hoodie and jeans.”_

_“Yeah. Since when do I care?”_

_“What if they stop you at the entrance?”_

_Jessica had stared her dead in the eye. “You can buy our way in. Problem solved. Hurry up, we don’t have all night.”)_

“Hey, eyes on me, Kingpin,” Jess said to the tall, chubby, and extremely white bodyguard who was speaking to Trish and dissecting her with his tiny blue eyes.

Trish smiled apologetically at him. “She’s my friend. It’s her first time here, she’s a little nervous.” She handed him the cash and he handed her two purple bracelets. (Somewhere in hell, Kilgrave was laughing at her right now). “Thank you very much.”

If the outside of the club was eye-stabbing awful, the inside was just plain _horrifying_. Even the goddamn carpet was purple, and if this place didn’t cure Jessica of her aversion to the color, nothing else would. Time to put the whole reverse psychology thing to test.

“What are we looking for?” asked Trish, raising her voice over the song that was literally almost blasting Jessica’s cranium.

“Right now, the bar,” Jess answered, elbowing her way through the sweaty bodies of the dancing people around them. Finding Mister Drug Dealer would be quite a feat in this place where everybody looked like a Maggia member or some shit.

“How can I help you?” asked the bartender with a gentle smile. Jessica sulked. Because _God fucking damn it_ —he looked like Luke. Only shorter and with less prominent muscles under his shirt.

It was like this place had been designed to torture her, specifically.

“Is this an open bar?” He nodded. “Bourbon. The strongest one you got.”

He looked at Trish next. She put up a hand. “I’m good, thank you.” When he was gone, Trish turned to Jessica. “Are we looking for Wyatt?”

“Not necessarily. We’re looking for anything that could lead us to where Wyatt is. A commotion, maybe more buff dudes guarding doors.”

“Got it.”

Sipping her booze, Jess observed the ambient. Watched for a moment the people on the dance floor (she was almost sure some of them were actually doing some sort of foreplay, but that was neither here nor there), the people gathered around tables, drinking, smoking. She paid detailed attention to those who were drinking, just to see if they were downing pills along with the liquor (they weren’t). When some people started to move in a straight line among the sea of bodies, going towards a red door at the far end of the club, Jessica allowed her eyes to follow them. They entered the room one by one. And then she knew where she had to go.

When she looked back at Trish over her shoulder, she was stretching her neck up, scanning the place as if snipers were about to start shooting. “Stop acting like a freaking meerkat, Trish. There’s no eagle trying to eat your head.”

“I’m sorry. I’m nervous.”

“You see that red door?” Trish spotted it easily, then nodded. “I’m going in. You walk around the club and see if any of these people say anything about the drugs. Meet me in your car in twenty minutes. Understood?”

“Okay.”

Jess emptied her glass and they split up.

The thing was: anyone could get in and out of the Red Room. If you had the damn purple bracelet they would let you in without question. The guy at the door (this one was a full head taller than Luke, Jess presumed, her head was on level with his stomach) barely spared her a glance before signaling for her to come in, no threats needed, no punches given, which saved her some time.

Inside, the walls were painted orange, the couches were all red with magenta cushions and whoever the fuck had designed this place was somewhat much blinder than Murdock (she had a feeling that, since he could hear neon, he would be able to hear these colors, too). Although, perhaps, he would appreciate all this Hell Aesthetics they had going on here.

In the middle of the room, on a large coffee table made of glass and silver, were several round purple pills. Nobody dared to touch it before giving money to a skinny, ginger-haired guy, who was sitting on the couch with his legs spread and a smile on his face that looked far too forced to be believable. If Jessica didn’t know better, she’d say he didn’t want to be here.

Jessica stood in a corner near the exit door, partially hidden behind the red curtains. With her phone set to _silent_ and the flash off, she snapped a few pictures of the bastard as he carefully placed a pill on a young girl’s tongue and carefully pushed her mouth shut using his index finger under her chin.

“Do you like it?” Jessica heard him ask, and for a moment his face flashed into Kilgrave’s and she blinked black spots out of her vision.

_(Do you like it, Jessica? Tell me you do.)_

She offered him a faint smile, as if smiling through a fog, as if smiling through death.

“Sure.”

_(No. Never.)_

Jessica was there to see it; the instant the drug kicked in. The ecstasy, the all-consuming frenzy that seemed to take over every cell in that girl’s body. It started with a loud grunt, like a pig that was about to be slaughtered. Then she threw her head back with her mouth open as if she was laughing, but no sound came out. Her whole body jerked back, bending backwards like a boomerang or something. It was like watching a demonic possession in a movie, except the demon was staring at her with that same complacent smile on his face and she was screaming now, and smiling, and laughing, and crying—actual tears streaming down her face—as she pushed herself up and looked down at her hands, sparkles of electricity encircling it.

Jessica caught the whole thing. In video. Then made her way out of the club as fast as she could before someone who wasn’t on drugs spotted her there.

Trish was waiting in the car, like she was instructed, and Jess’s heart was pounding so loud in her ears it took her a minute to assimilate that Trish was speaking to her.

“Did you find him?”

“Yup.”

“Did you talk to him? Confront him?”

“No. Too many people in there. But I got this.”

Halfway through the video, Jessica pressed pause, because Trish looked like she was about to throw up.

She produced a bottle of water from her bag and drank half of it in one go. “What do we do next? Email it to the police?”

“Not yet.” Jess sank lower into her seat, pulling her hood up. “Not before I question him first.”

Trish nodded, letting her hands slide from the steering wheel. “So we wait.”

“Should have brought some popcorn.”

 

 

* * *

 

 

The clock on Jessica’s phone read half past four in the morning, which essentially meant they had been waiting here for two hours. Trish had dozed off twice already, and Jessica would have cracked a joke about her making a terrible P.I., but she wasn’t in the best mood for jokes right now. She wasn’t in a good mood, period.

Oscar had texted her once. ‘ _Hey. Just want to know if you’re okay.’_ She did not reply for a whole hour, but then, when guilt began to crawl under her flesh, making goosebumps erupt all over her body ( _come on, Jones, are you just waiting for things to be torn apart?)_ , she texted him a quick _‘I’m good’_ and called it a night.

Apparently, she had a lot of learning to do. Problem was that she was still stuck in the _Regretting_ stage.

“Come on, asshole, quit hiding in your evil den,” Jess said under her breath, lifting the flask of whiskey to her lips.

Trish moved in her seat, rubbing the sleep away from her eyes. “How do we know he’s coming out the back door?”

“The red room opens to this street. He acts like he’s the king of that place. He probably only leaves that room to go home.”

Trish let out a tired sigh. She clearly found this waiting game far less enjoyable than Jessica did. “Something about this place reminds me of that club we used to go to when we were younger.”

Jessica kind of wanted to go back to tense silence. “Yeah. The drug use and physical abuse is quite similar.”

Trish looked at her reproachfully. “It wasn’t all bad.”

“Yes, it was.”

“We had fun sometimes.”

She had changed clothes _again_ (had to use the bathroom of a nearby cafe _just_ for that, and how did superheroes not get fed up with this costume shit?), gone back to her spandex suit and washed off all of her makeup. She looked ten years younger, and if Jessica listened closely, she would probably hear that cray cray crap playing in the back of her head.

“Like, remember when we used to watch those bad movies sitting on the floor of my living room and drinking bad wine?” Her lips stretched into a small smile, more sad than anything, but her eyes sparkled a little too bright at the memory. It was like staring straight into the sun. It was ridiculous. “You always complained about how bad it tasted but drank it anyway.”

Something tugged at that one muscle in the central cavity of Jessica’s chest. She wanted to reach down her throat and pull it out. “Getting wasted on sweet pink wine was a much better option than watching those movies.”

A brief laughter escaped Trish’s mouth, muffled and strained. “We used to rent them from a Blockbuster.” She squeezed her eye shut for a second. “My God, remember those?”

Jessica snorted. “You mean they let you take whatever you wanted for free.”

“Well, not exactly for free, but…” replied Trish, and Jessica bit her tongue. Because she could remember, now, all the times the owners (men, mostly, which was not only creepy but also all kinds of messed up) would ask for pictures in exchange for movies. Trish didn’t seem to mind it too much back then, but that was probably because she was high.

“But also,” she started again, voice distant, “we didn’t have to worry much about our lives beyond what we were going to do the next day.”

At her words, Jessica frowned. “Yeah, speak for yourself. I was constantly freaking out thinking you might OD or choke on your puke or some shit like that.”

“Jess.”

“‘Patsy Walker Found in Her Bathtub. Dies A Tragic Death at Twenty.’”

Trish arched her eyebrows. “You came up with a headline?”

“That’s how vivid the nightmares got.”

Trish shook her head, her expression unreadable. “In retrospect, we _did_ have more fun _after_ I left rehab.” A pause. “Actually, I think I only remember the movies we watched after I sobered up.”

Jess nodded once (and maybe, _maybe_ , her lips turned upwards just slightly). “Predictably.”

It was silent for a moment. Then, “I never thanked you for any of that.”

Jessica’s body tensed up. She glanced at Trish out of the corner of her eye. “You don’t have to.”

“I am doing it now.” There was something in her voice that Jessica couldn’t decipher. And she didn’t really want to. “Thank you for literally saving my ass.”

It was the second time Trish had said those words to her in the span of just a few hours and, honestly, Jessica didn’t quite know what to do with that. She _never_ knew what to do with thank yous. Of all things she normally inflicted on people, gratitude was a rare one

Her tongue kind of wanted to say _‘same’_ but her teeth, gritted tightly together, wouldn’t allow the words to come out. So Jessica just let the conversation die there and directed her attention to the club again at the exact same moment Trish groaned beside her, clutching her stomach.

“What? What’s wrong?” Jessica asked, urgency bleeding into her voice.

“It’s that feeling again; the anxiety.”

Jessica wet her lips. “Your sixth sense?”

“I think.” She groaned again. “God. It’s bad.”

Jessica’s hands were clammy in her gloves. “How bad?”

Trish’s lips turned down. “Very.”

It was then that Wyatt walked out of the club, hands in his pockets, head down, and everything would have worked according to the plan if someone in a coat and hoodie hadn’t appeared out of the fucking blue and pointed a gun at him, shouting:

“Get back into the fucking club!”

Jess knew that voice.

“Margo.” _God fucking damn it,_ what is it about guns that people love so much?

Trish shivered beside Jessica. “We need to stop her!”

“No!” Jess said, putting an arm across Trish’s chest. “We leave this car now, she gets scared and shoots his head off.”

Jess could see it in Trish’s eyes; the moment she got the message.

Wyatt said nothing, just put his hands up and took a few steps back towards the red door again.

Margo made an odd noise. “Yes. I have some business that I need to finish.”

Well, Jess thought, that sounded like _‘very bad’_.

 

 

 


	4. Part 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Trish and Jess get their shit together, mostly. Also Malcolm is a gift to humanity.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sooo, this is it, the last chapter of this fic. A huge THANK YOU to everyone who's read this fic, commented, and left kudos, I'm being 1000000% honest when I say it means a lot to me <3 This fic took me ages to finish and then a few more decades to edit but finally here we are lol I'm glad, though, that I got to spend some time with my favorite girls :')
> 
> I hope you like this chapter and the conclusion to this fic :D

Here’s something else Jessica noticed about Trish: she was a pain in the ass in a fight, thanks to her quick reflexes and extended knowledge of Krav Maga.

Besides, having someone else fighting alongside Jessica gave her the great advantage of not being the only target of their tasers. And while Jessica had a lot more tolerance to those (Trish definitely felt more pain, so enhanced healing and durability probably weren't her thing), Trish was still a tough one to catch.

Jessica was taking care of MIB One—a punch to the gut and a kick in the crotch normally did the trick—when a second one got her from behind, pressing the taser into her back, sending bolts of electricity down her spine. She swirled around and seized the taser with ease, pressing it into his neck.

“Go to sleep, asshole,” she said under her breath as Trish kicked MIB Three in the face, blood spilling out of his mouth. He fell on the couch, and stayed there, unconscious.

“How was it?” Trish asked, and the self-satisfied smile on her face should probably make Jessica angrier than she was.

“Not bad.” Then MIB Four launched himself forward towards the coffee table, the one with the drugs, and Jessica grabbed him by the back of his suit before he could touch the pills. “I don’t think so, Jelly Belly.”

Jess shoved his head against a wall—just hard enough to knock him out—and let him drop to the floor. Trish had her arm around MIB Five's neck, and despite the purplish color of his face and the way his eyes were starting to pop out, he still, somehow, managed to push Trish back with so much force she hit her spine against the wall.

"Ow!” she grunted, letting go of him.

Outside the room, Wyatt shouted in pain.

Jessica threw MIB Five across the room onto the couch, because she was getting tired of this shit.

Then, out of nowhere, a baton caught Jessica square in the face, and someone kicked her in the stomach, sending her to the ground. She could feel blood leaking out of her nose, tiny drops dripping to the ground as she pushed herself up.

"That hurt,” she said, getting up to her feet. "So much.”

Jess seized his hand, then the other, twisted them behind his back until he yelped in pain.

"Leave it to me,” Trish said, and punched him in the nose, exactly like he had done to Jess.

"An eye for an eye?” Jess asked, tossing MIB's motionless body to the corner. Her nose stung when she breathed, which was probably a bad sign.

"Only when they deserve it.”

When they finally walked into the main room, Wyatt was tied to a chair, his head bent down as if he had fallen asleep, but at least Jessica couldn't see any injuries. Margo stood in front of him, a few feet away, a gun pointed to him, her hands shaking. Jess noted tears glistening on her cheeks.

Trish inhaled sharply beside her.

“Stay where you are!” Margo yelled, voice an octave above panic. “Don’t try to stop me.”

Jessica swallowed heavily. “What did you do to him?”

It wasn’t just Margo’s hands that were shaking; her whole body was trembling, every cell buzzing with anxiety and fear. “Sedative.”

 _Jesus_ . She had planned this whole shit out. She could already hear Hogarth’s voice in the back of her head— _‘It was premeditated, she had a gun in her bag, she sedated him, and shot him repeatedly’_.

Jess balled her hands into fists. “Margo, listen to me,” she started, voice controlled. “You don’t want to do that.”

Margo let out a raspy laugh, fingers tightening around the gun.“You don’t know what I want.”

“I know you don’t want to kill him.”

Trish’s breathing was shallow beside Jessica, but thankfully, miraculously, she hadn’t moved a finger since they had entered the room.

Margo shook her head. “I _do_ ,” she said. “I want this fucking son a bitch dead. I do.”

_(—You can’t kill me, silly girl.)_

Jess blinked a few times, inhaling deeply. “You want him dead—I know. But you don’t want to be the one to kill him.”

A strangled sob escaped Margo’s lips, and Jessica’s throat closed up. “He’s the reason Mattie is dead! She was everything I had left, and he killed her. He deserves to be punished.” She was clutching her stomach now, with her free hand, as if her body would split in half.

Jess nodded, inching closer to where she was standing as carefully as she could manage. “Yeah, he does. And I don’t give a damn what happens to him, but if you put a bullet in his head that shit is gonna haunt you for the rest of your life. It’ll be your personal hell whenever you close your eyes and no amount of booze or therapy is gonna be able to make you forget that.”

Margo sobbed again. “You don’t know that.”

“I _know_.” Her tongue was heavy in her mouth. “Okay? I know.”

Beside her, Trish went completely still.

Margo’s face twisted into the most anguished expression Jessica had ever seen in her life. It was actually quite hard to look at, not the kind of shit Jessica was used to dealing with, so she was relieved for more than one reason when Margo lowered the gun and brought her free hand up to cover her face.

“Slide the gun over to me,” Jess instructed, voice low. It was hard to know what could trigger someone who was already triggered. Surprisingly, she did as she was asked without a single complaint. Jessica picked the thing up and crumpled it up into a messy ball. “I have proof, Margo, of what they did to Mattie and other kids.”

She looked up at Jessica, eyes red and swollen. “Really?”

Jess nodded. “Yes.” Something flickered in Margo’s eyes. Jess continued; “I have pictures and a video. I just need to question him first to tie up some loose ends.”

Margo smiled, then. Openly. And Jessica’s goddamn stomach dropped to the damn floor. “You promise me he’s gonna pay?”

For once, Jessica was actually hopeful that she could keep that promise. “Yes. I’ll call the police as soon as I’m done here, but right now, I need you to get the hell out of here and let me do my job before anybody else gets hurt.”

She nodded frantically, the smile still on her face. “Okay.” She was almost out of the door when she turned around to say, “I didn’t know you had a partner, Jones.”

Trish was still very quiet. “Because I don’t,” said Jess.

Margo winked at her. “Suits you.” And then she walked out of the door.

 

 

* * *

 

 

With the lights off, the inside of Purple Diamond looked more black than purple, which Jessica's eyes would be eternally grateful for. Trish was seated on one of the many purple tuffets scattered around the room, knees drawn up to her chest, scarf and sunglasses off. They had told the bozos in the Red Room to get lost about thirty minutes ago, so now it was just the two of them plus Mister Drug Dealer—Margo had done her homework, apparently, because he was still unconscious, a single string of drool seeping from his mouth.

"Do you think he'll wake up soon?" asked Trish, and her voice sounded wrong. Like someone else was using her mouth to speak.

Jess shrugged, sorting through the booze on the bar shelf. Judging by the staggering amount of absinthe bottles, the people who came to this club were far more miserable than Jessica.

"Based on my vague experience with sedatives, maybe another hour."

She picked out a bottle of whiskey from the bottle shelf, fetched a glass from under the counter and went to sit on the floor, back rested against another tuffet.

Trish dragged in a breath, like her lungs had grown twice their size. She was not looking at Jessica as she said, "You were right."

Jessica popped the bottle open. "Probably. But on what topic, specifically?"

"I suck at this hero thing."

Jessica's eyes darted briefly to her face. "I heard it takes practice."

Trish shifted on the tuffet, crossing her legs. "I've been watching you, and I realized I have no idea what I'm doing."

Jess downed her glass, welcoming the burn in her throat. "Welcome to the club."

"You know what you're doing."

"No, I don't."

"You do." Trish's eyes were on her now. "You may not realize it, but you always know what step to take next, like you're following instructions."

Jess's face was probably saying something because Trish tipped her head in a way that said _‘Don't look at me like that.’_

"I saw you interacting with Daredevil, Jess. The both of you... had something going on. You get each other. I was just..." she shrugged, "lost."

Jess could feel something uncoil in her lower belly. Trish had been, for the most part of their lives, Jessica's moral compass. She could always switch her brain to _‘What Would Trish Walker Do’_ and land closer to the best solution in almost every situation ever. And maybe _that_ was the vital thing that had been lost the moment Trish did the worst imaginable thing. Because if Trish had fallen that low, Jessica could only imagine she would eventually fall lower.

Having only her fucked up mind to rely on was terrifying.

Which was why she had absolutely no freaking idea what to say right now. So she sat in silence and drank.

Trish continued, "That's always been the thing about you. You are used to chaos—to having to start over. I've always tried to control everything around me, even when I couldn't. Because I had this weird, fixated idea that I had to be more and better, that I was never doing enough."

"Yeah, Dorothy's narcissistic ass made sure to tell you that, repeatedly."

Trish shook her head. "It wasn't just my mother. Part of that was me. I always thought there was a much greater version of me waiting ahead, and maybe if I were like you, if I had similar abilities, I could finally reach her. But I guess I'll always just be... me."

Jessica stared at her, incredulously. "And what's so wrong with that?"

Trish shrugged. "I don't know. I didn’t know then and I don’t know now."

Jess felt her chest tightening. “Weren’t all those years in therapy supposed to help you figure that out?” was what she said because _‘there's nothing wrong with being you’_ was completely impossible to articulate right now.

Trish chuckled. So Jessica took that as a good sign.

Wyatt made a noise low in his throat, but his eyes didn’t open. When Jess poked his legs with her foot, he didn’t react.

“I’m sorry,” said Trish’s voice. She sounded like herself this time, but Jessica’s whole body went cold anyway.

“What?” pushed past her lips before she could swallow the word with liquor.

“I'm sorry I wasn't there for you when your mother came back. And for doing what I did. I clearly lost it, and I should have stepped back.” She swallowed, then, and looked Jessica in the eye for the first time since she had showed up at her door many days ago. “I know it’s too late to regret that, and it probably means nothing, but... I _am_ sorry.”

Something was stabbing Jessica on the inside, like tiny needles. “I don’t hate you for that. I should, but I don’t.”

A faint smile tugged at Trish’s lips. “Is it selfish that I'm glad to hear that?”

“Probably.” Her tongue curled in her mouth. “And it doesn't mean I accept what you did or that I agree with it. Because you did a very shitty thing. You really did. You swallowed a whole lot of crap and regurgitated it all back up at me. You screwed up—”

“You can keep finding synonyms for that, I won't even try to stop you.”

“But... at the end of the day... you're not a shitty person.”

Relief softened Trish’s features and Jessica felt something inside her snap, forcing her muscles to relax and her lungs to breathe easier. It was a feeling very similar to being wasted, so maybe the booze had something to do with that.

There were words marching on her tongue. She needed to let them out. “We can try this… _thing…_  that we’re doing.” Jess forced herself to look Trish in the eye, her fists clenching around the bottle she was holding. “But you pull that crap again, go behind my back one more time, and it’s over. You’re done. I don’t give anyone a second chance, I’m giving _you_ a second chance. Use it wisely.”

Trish blinked away the tears that were starting to well up in her eyes (it made Jessica feel uneasy. She kind of wanted the floor to open up underneath her and swallow her whole).

“Thank you,” Trish said for the third time, and Jess had no idea why she was counting, or why it mattered, but this was the first time she had actually accepted the words.

In the chair, Wyatt grunted, coughed, and finally opened his eyes. He seemed somewhat relieved to see the two of them and not a lunatic with a gun pointed at him.

“Where’s the third one?” he slurred.

Jessica pushed herself up, and Trish mirrored her. “You don’t seem surprised to see us.”

He was panting. It was extremely annoying. “Is she hiding? She wants to kill me.”

Jessica rolled her eyes. “She’s gone, but she’s definitely not the only one who wants to kill you.”

Sweat was pooling on his forehead. “You would’ve killed me before, if you wanted to.” At Jessica’s frown, he explained, “When you came in the red room earlier.”

 _Shit_. So maybe she hadn’t been stealthy enough.

“That’s because I need something from you.”

“What?”

“The name of the person you work for or with.”

Wyatt was not your typical villain, Jess concluded, as she studied his face. He did not laugh, or make a witty remark, or brag about how great his plan was. As a matter of fact, he was barely managing to keep a straight face—she could almost feel every muscle in his face fighting the urge to contort in agony. Jessica was starting to think her suspicions were right and he didn’t want to be here.

“You already know,” he stated.

Trish frowned. Jess could imagine invisible question marks popping up all around her head. Jessica did not like the sound of any of this.

“Okay, listen, I’m really not in the mood for riddles or whatever. You know I have proof of all the illicit shit you’re doing here, so if you don’t want me to rip your tongue from your skull, you should start talking.”

Wyatt closed his eyes, not in defeat, but in frustration. “You got here because someone gave you my name. Come on, P.I. Solve the puzzle.”

It hit Jessica like a goddamn train. “Ugh, I’m so goddamn stupid,” she said under her breath.

“What’s wrong?” Trish asked.

“Laney,” Jessica spat, anger filling her veins. “She was lying through her goddamn teeth and we fell for that shit.”

And goddamn, pumped-up asshole _Gary_ did not help Jessica at all—he had helped Laney herself. He knew Wyatt would have cooperated since the beginning, and that’s why he hadn’t mentioned him. Instead, he gave Jessica Laney Hayness’s name (Hayness, nor even Danvers) and warned Laney about Jessica beforehand so she wouldn’t come after him.

Infuriatingly clever and headache-inducing.

Trish looked as puzzled as Jessica felt. “Wait, so we had her right there and we let her escape?”

“It wasn’t your fault,” said Wyatt, sounding more awake now. “That’s what she does.”

Trish was frowning so hard Jess was afraid her eyebrows would snap. “What do you mean that’s what she does?”

“What exactly did Laney tell you?”

“Crazy mother abused the shit out of her with your help, then killed herself, family swept everything under the rug, and she moved out of town,” Jess said. “But she used many more words.”

Wyatt nodded, and forced himself to sit straight. “She wasn’t lying about the abuse—but I didn’t take part in it. I was a child myself, but I stood idly while it happened, so make of it what you may.”

Jess sighed. She was getting impatient. “I’m not here to judge your fucked up family, Wyatt. I just want to crack this case and give those kids’ families some closure.”

He coughed again. “You know about the clinic, I suppose.”

“Yeah, yeah.”

“My mother’s first experiment with mutant genes was on herself. She wanted to prove she could do it, so she inseminated herself before trying it out on other women.”

Jessica swallowed hard. “Laney.”

“Oh my God,” said Trish, and she sat down on a chair across from Wyatt.

“But Laney was completely ordinary when she was a baby, and it frustrated my mother so much she started to inject Laney with these… drugs. Twice a day, she’d do that. She wanted Laney to be a genius like herself—hence the name.”

Jesus fuck. Just when Jessica thought she had seen everything. Trish looked a little green.

“Did she succeed?” Jess asked, albeit knowing the answer.

“Eventually. She did become the genius my mom wanted, but then came the side effects.” Wyatt breathed deeply. “It took us a while to understand what Laney can do but… she can bend reality, sort of.”

“She can _what_?” asked Trish. Jessica couldn’t feel the tips of her toes.

“She can make you feel or see things that aren’t real, and make them so believable you can’t tell you’re being manipulated.”

Jess was feeling light-headed, as if she was about to faint. “So when we talked to her she _made_ us believe she was telling us the truth?”

Wyatt pondered for a while. “It’s more like… she forced empathy on you. So that you felt sorry for her sob story, thus making her words more believable.”

“That’s genius,” Trish said and Jessica scowled at her. “No, I mean, it’s definitely morally wrong, but… she _is_ a genius.”

“Mattie,” Jessica said, voice a little strangled. Her vision was getting dark again. “I saw she shoot herself in the head right in front of me, but the cops didn’t find the body. Is it possible that Laney forced me to see that?”

Wyatt let out a sardonic laugh. “That’s exactly the kind of shit she likes to make people see. I’ve seen my mother kill herself multiple times thanks to her.”

_“God damn it!”_

Jess couldn’t hear a fucking thing anymore. She could feel the blood racing through her veins as her heart hammered against the walls of her skull. Her ribs were squeezing her lungs so tight she felt a pang of pain in her chest whenever she tried to inhale. With every intake of breath, she felt her vision becoming more and more blurred.

She was on her knees before she had time to remember that gravity was not supposed to crush her.

“Jess!” said Trish urgently, her voice closer than Jessica had expected. But not _too_ close—Trish didn’t touch her.

Something wet rolled down Jessica’s cheek. “I’m fine!” she said between gritted teeth. “Just— _shit_ —just give me a minute.”

_(Did you miss having someone inside your head?)_

It was _his_ voice, because of course it was. Jess had never been through this in front of an audience, and all the goddamn purple everywhere was not exactly helping, and Jessica was clenching her fists so hard she could feel the ground underneath her hands begin to crack.

_Get your goddamn shit together, Jones._

“How?” Jess managed out. “ _How_ does she do it? Eye contact, voodoo dolls, freaking witchcraft…?”

Wyatt shook his head. “She projects images and feeling into your head, I guess. I don’t know the mechanics of it; the only one who did is seven feet under ground.”

 _Fuck_.

Slowly, Jessica unclenched her fists, forced herself to sit back on her heels, but her whole body was aching.

“Can she force you to do shit?”

Wyatt raised an eyebrow. “Like mind control?”

_(Take care of her.)_

“Yeah. That.”

“No. It doesn’t work like that.”

Jessica exhaled, emptying her lungs completely. Then breathed that information in and let it spread through her bones.

“Good.” Her autonomy was intact. Anything else she could handle.

Pushing herself up again, she asked, “Where do _you_ fit in this whole scheme?”

Wyatt sighed. He wasn’t even trying to wiggle himself out of the rope tying him to the chair. Jess was sure Wyatt had sent that stupid message to Trish—the one threatening Malcolm. First because he was dumb and had no idea what he was doing, but also because he was quite bad at being evil. Nobody is born evil. Evil is made. Whatever sickness had been passed on from his mother to his sister, it had not corrupted him. Not completely. Not yet.

“I do what she tells me. Sell the drugs. Run this club.”

“But you gave her away, which puts you on her blacklist,” Jess incited.

Wyatt shrugged. “She sent Margo here to fucking murder me. I don’t really care anymore.” A pause. “Besides, she needs to be stopped.

“Why is she doing all this, anyway?” asked Trish, voice just above a whisper.

Wyatt wet his lips, seemingly lost in thoughts for a moment. When he spoke, he sounded somewhere between contrite and guilty. “When she started all this, after she came back from Boston almost two years ago, she wanted to help those kids be normal again—to cleanse them of these powers.”

“Wait a minute,” Jess said, pulse just now going back to normal. “The drugs were supposed to _cure_ them? And not give them powers?”

Wyatt look confused. “The drugs don't give them powers, it takes it away. But it's a slow process. It gives them a false sense of extra power for a couple hours, but as the drug wears off their actual powers get weaker. Until, eventually, they vanish.” He paused. “Or, at least, that’s what she intended; to fix what our mother broke. But she failed. Time and time again she failed, and she’s obsessed. She’s… she’s becoming mom.”

Jess and Trish exchanged looks. The whole thing did make more sense now.

“Is that why you took those pictures? To stop her?” asked Jess.

He looked ashamed, now. “I was a coward, though.” He swallowed. “But not anymore.”

Jess pondered for a minute or two. Then nodded. “Have you ever heard of The Raft?”

He shook his head. “No.”

“It’s an ultra-maximum-security prison specially designed to hold enhanced and superhuman criminals. It’s in the middle of nowhere and the people inside have no contact with the outside world. The cops will make sure she gets locked up in there.”

“Good.”

Well, he sounded sure.

“You’re her accomplice. You’re getting framed, too. You know that, right?”

Wyatt laughed again. It was a tiny self-deprecating laugh that irked Jessica’s nerves. “Lady, I am done. Do you have any idea how many people I’ve seen die in the past few months?”

“I can estimate roughly.”

“I just want all of this to be over.”

At least they had that in common.

Jess pulled her phone out of her back pocket. “In which case, I’m calling the police.”

 

 

* * *

 

 

Wyatt continued to cooperate when the police got there, nodding patiently, walking when he was told to, not even flinching when the cops twisted his arms behind his back and cuffed him. Misty looked as surprised as Jessica was, except she also looked extremely suspicious of the whole thing, which was basically what she was paid for; to be wary of everything all the damn time.

Her expression became considerably less pleased when she spotted Jessica by the door of the club, waiting for someone to take her statement. It had not been her plan to stick around for this part, but she was trying to make things right for once. Mostly.

“Ah, so _you_ reported the missing body that night.” Something about the way Misty Knight spoke to people always made Jessica shudder inwardly. It was very intimidating, Jess had to admit.

“I didn’t know the body was missing when I called.”

Misty ignored her. “And _that_ guy is behind that murder plus the experiments on those children?”

Now Jess could understand why she was skeptical. “Not just him. Also his sister. Laney Danvers.”

Misty’s eyebrows drew together as she crossed her arms over her chest. One of them was bionic. Jessica could vaguely remember that night at Midland Circle. Claire and Karate Lady supporting Misty as blood leaked out of the void where her chopped off arm had once been. Now Jess just breathed and kept her eyes on Misty’s face.

“She wasn’t present in the pictures and video you submitted as evidence.”

Jessica sucked her bottom lip between her teeth. “Long story short, she’s a compulsive liar.”

“Hmm,” Misty said and let her arms drop to her sides. “And do you know where I can find her?”

“Yeah. And I also know you don't want find her on your own.”

Misty rolled her eyes this time in what Jess assumed was her fed up face. Then she smiled an ice-cold smile, which froze Jessica from head to toes. “Let me guess, she has abilities.”

It made her life easier to have someone on the other side who knew about all this crap. Misty also seemed considerably less reluctant to accept that there were some crimes she couldn’t solve on her own. Which— _weird_ , but also, _thank God_.

“She can bend reality to her will.” Misty didn’t react, just stared. “If unbreakable skin and zombie ninjas is where you wanna draw the line, that’s fine by me.”

Misty made a face. “I fought the spirit of a dragon not so long ago.”

“What?” _Danny_ . And— _ugh_ , not this shit again. “No. I don’t want to know.”

Misty shook her head. “I'm just wondering why you always get the craziest ones.”

Jessica snorted. Se couldn’t help it. “Crap-ass luck?”

Misty chuckled low in her throat. And that was it—the _only_ thing that still managed to surprise Jessica.

“So how do you plan on capturing her?” Misty stuffed her hands into the pockets of her coat.

Jessica blew air out of her mouth. “Sedatives and a whole lot of punching.”

Misty nodded once. “You could have left the crime scene, like you’ve done multiple times before. And yet you’re still here, strangely giving me all the answer I’m asking.” She narrowed her eyes. “Which means you need backup.”

Jessica really admired the smart ones (when they were on her side, at least). “Kind of.” Jessica brushed a strand of hair away from her face. “You have to send her straight to The Raft. She’s not gonna confess anything. Wyatt's testimony and the evidence I sent you have got to be enough.”

Misty nodded. “It _should_ be. But we can count on the people who came to the club as well. Speaking of which, what about the kids in the pictures?”

Jessica wondered that too, actually. Where the hell had Murdock been for the past five hours? “That’s being taken care of by someone else.” She _hoped_.

Misty lifted an eyebrow. “The Devil of Hell’s Kitchen?” Jess frowned. “Luke's in Harlem. God only knows where Danny is, and you’re here…”

“Yeah. Process of elimination.”

“All right,” Misty said, taking a breath. “My team is gonna follow behind you and give you 20 minutes to do what you have to do. After that, we take action. Deal?”

Sounded reasonable. But. “Boost it up to 40 minutes.”

“30. And _that_ ’s the final word. Now get your ass moving. We’ve got a murderer to catch.”

A murderer who could bend reality. Riveting.

 

 

* * *

 

 

The waterfront, where, according to Wyatt, Laney had been doing her dirty work for the past few years, was filled with old, decaying buildings and containers of all sizes. Far at the back, hidden in the shadows of the city, was an abandoned warehouse. The windows at the top were broken and the door was dented in several spots (whether from fighting or something else Jess couldn’t tell).

Trish had been uncomfortably silent during the short walk from where she had parked her car and the front of the warehouse, her hands closed into fists. Misty had encircled the perimeter with police cars to prevent any attempted escape. Even if they failed, even if Laney managed to cast her spell on some armed guards, who could potentially shoot other cops to death, at least there was a small chance that someone would be able to stop her _somehow_.

“Jess, are you okay?” Trish asked as Jessica stopped a few feet away from the door of the warehouse, her feet refusing to move.

“No. Next question.” She really was not looking forward to having someone messing with her head again. Especially when she couldn’t even tell it was happening.

Trish pressed her lips together in a thin line. “I know you are nervous about this, but this is not like last time. You’re not alone. You have the cops on your side, and I’m right here.”

She said _‘I’m right here’_ the same way she had said _‘I’m gonna live forever’_ on that rooftop, when she was high out of her mind and they were young and stupid. It did not make Jessica feel any less anxious.

“Which means she can use you against me and vice versa.”

Everyone had an Achilles’ heel. That was all Jessica used to have, too. Just one. A single person. But now they were piling up, like dust in the corners of her apartment, quietly and steadily, taking up more and more space in her life.  And yet, on the list of people Jessica couldn’t bare to lose, the very first name remained the same.

And Laney _knew_ that. Because Trish had been there, sitting by Jessica’s side that day at the diner.

“Don’t tell me to wait in the car,” Trish warned her, eyebrows raised so high on her face Jess was afraid it might merge with her hairline.

“What’s the point of saying that if you’re not gonna listen anyway?” Because Jessica was surrounded by idiots who always did the polar opposite of what she specifically told them to do.

“Good,” Trish said, a little self-satisfied smile on her face.

Jessica counted up to ten, chewed the inside of her bottom lip. “Right. Let’s go.”

Laney’s powers were limited; Wyatt had told them while they waited for the cops. Since their mother had died when Laney was about six, she hadn’t had much time to develop her abilities to the maximum. It lasted up to two hours if she was using it on one person, and then dropped proportionally as the number of people went up—one hour when used on two people, 40 minutes on three and so on and so forth. He had never seen her use it on more than five people at once. But five people seeing a reality that nobody else could see was enough of a mess in the grand scheme of things.

Had it been any other occasion, Jessica would have quite literally kicked the front door down, but considering they had to draw as little attention as possible to themselves, Jess simply hooked her fingers under the sliding door and pulled it up just enough for her and Trish to slip through the gap. It creaked, predictably, being old and rusty as it was, and Trish grimaced at the noise, covering her ears with her hands.

“Chicken shit,” Jessica said under her breath, and stepped inside.

As it turned out, this place was not only Laney’s evil den but also the place she had been living in, judging by the ragged couch tossed to the corner, the flat TV precariously set upon a falling-apart dresser, and the stained mattress on the floor.

Behind her, Trish made an odd little noise. “It smells like hospitals in here.”

It did. Like cheap disinfectant, and medicine, and sickness. It kind of made Jessica want to jump out of the window.

“It seems like there’s no one home,” said Trish, blinking several times to adjust her eyes to the darkness. The moonlight was the only thing illuminating the place.

“She’s hiding,” Jess said. “There hasn’t been any news about Wyatt turning up dead in his club. So she knows her plan failed.”

“She’s expecting us?”

“She’s expecting _someone_.”

Trish blinked. “But if she knows her plan’s failed then why didn’t she run away?”

“Because I’m not a fucking coward like the rest of my family,” said Laney’s voice and Jess jumped, turning to the source of the sound.

She was standing by a wooden door, which Jessica believed led to some sort of basement and—why is it always the goddamn basement?

“I should have guessed you’d figure it out, Jones.” She scoffed, shaking her head. “Or rather, I should have guessed little brother would betray me.”

Jess gritted her teeth. “You sent Margo there to kill him. I think you’re even.”

Laney’s chin quivered once. Jess couldn’t tell if that was a projected vision or reality. (Were they even having this conversation right now? She didn’t know. There was no way to _know_. It was starting a dull panic in Jess’s core).

“Margo wanted to kill Wyatt?” she sounded surprised. Genuinely. And Jessica honestly wanted to scream or punch something or both. “I did not know that! I just told her what happened to Mattie. If she went there to kill him, she did it of her own accord.”

All right. So Laney had not manipulated Margo into killing Wyatt. But she had counted on it. Had hoped it would happen so Wyatt would die before going to the police. Worse yet, she had probably hoped Margo would shoot Jessica and Trish as well. On top of being a sociopathic killer, she was also awfully pragmatic.

“What _you_ did to Mattie,” corrected Jessica. “You did that. You’re the one making the drugs and distributing them.”

Laney cocked her head. “The drugs do not kill. Some people’s DNA are just not compatible with them. They glitch.”

“Glitch?” Jessica repeated. “Your so called _glitch_ is what the rest of us call _death_. You’re killing them.”

“I’m not!” Laney yelled. Her voice bouncing off the walls and scratching Jessica’s ears. Trish winced next to her. “I’m not killing people. You don’t know shit about what I’m doing. Do not presume to know!”

“We know you wanted to help them, right?” Trish intervened, taking a step forward. Jess had the syringe with the sedative in the pocket of her hoodie. The plan was to get close enough to use it without letting Laney get inside their heads. “You wanted to fix what your mother did to them. To help them.”

Laney bit her bottom lip. “They shouldn't be what they are. My mother made them that way. Their powers… they don't deserve it.”

Trish swallowed audibly. “What went wrong?”

She shook her head, and maybe the thing rolling down her cheeks were tears, or maybe it was a figment of Jessica’s imagination, or maybe she was just going crazy.

“You can’t make a single pill that matches every person’s DNA. Some take it well, others… not so much.”

“So the collateral damage is death?” Jess spat before she could help it because shutting up when it was convenient had never been her strong suit.

Something that Jessica couldn’t decipher flashed in Laney’s eyes. “Things got out of control.”

Jess scoffed in the back of her throat. “Yeah, no shit.”

“Why didn‘t you stop?” asked Trish, voice soft.

Laney opened her mouth. Shut it again. “My mother made me for a purpose. She wanted me to be as bright as she was, but I'm better. I'm not gonna continue what she started, I'm gonna end it.”

And that was the perfect example of good intentions gone terribly wrong.

“You need to stop,” Trish said before Jessica could find her voice. “You're not helping those kids, you’re hurting them.”

She frowned, her face turning a little red. “None of them would  even _be_ here if it wasn't for my mother! Can't you see how wrong their existence is?”

Trish’s lips pressed together in a thin line.

“That's not up for you to decide,” Jess said, throat dry.

“And who are _you_ to tell me that?” Laney sneered. “As if you've never killed before.”

Jessica saw purple. Then red. So. Much. Red.

_(I'm not my mother. I'm not you. I can control myself.)_

“We're not gonna let you hurt innocent people,” was her response, and her voice was steady despite the buzzing in her head. “The cops are on their way. After the evidence presented to them, they have a free pass to shoot you, should they feel the need. We came here to give you a second choice—to turn yourself over to the police.”

Laney pretended to ponder for a moment or two. “I’ll do you one better.”

It all happened _too fast_.

Laney produced a gun from the pocket of her oversized jacket, and neither Jess nor Trish had time to process anything before she fired the thing once. Just one shot. Jessica didn’t feel the bullet cutting through her flesh but she did feel the burn of it settling somewhere between her guts, and the dizzying sensation of the blood leaking out of her.

“Jess!” Trish screamed—it was the loudest Jessica had ever heard her scream.

As a reflex, Jessica brought a hand to her middle, where it hurt. Blood was pushing between her fingers. She couldn’t see Laney anymore. She couldn’t see anything properly. Jess was starting to see black spots behind her eyelids.

“Jess! Oh my God!” She felt arms around her, grabbing her shoulders seconds before her knees gave out. And then Trish was lowering her down to the floor, placing her head on her knees. “Jess, please. _Please_ say something.”

Jessica wet her lips. Her tongue felt heavy in her mouth. “Laney.”

“Is it seriously the only thing you’re concerned about right now?” Trish sounded hysterical. And Jessica was still trying to assimilate the fact that she had been shot and was pretty much bleeding to death.

It didn’t feel right.

“Jess, don’t you dare die on me!”

It didn’t _feel_ right.

“Screw the plan. I’m calling 911.”

Jessica grabbed her wrist so hard Trish groaned. “Ow!”

“Trish,” Jessica coughed. She could taste blood in her mouth. “Listen to me. This isn’t real. Okay? She’s messing with our heads. None of this is real.”

Horror was all Jessica could see on Trish’s face. “You can’t know that.”

“I _can_ , actually.” She coughed again. It was getting harder to breathe. “I should be slipping into unconsciousness by now. But I’m not.”

“Enhanced durability, Jess,” Trish reminded her.

“Yeah, I don’t think it has much use against death.”

“Can you _not_ be an asshole in a moment like this?”

Jessica inhaled deeply. A huge mistake, if you asked her, because it made her want to cough again. “You didn’t feel it, did you?”

Trish’s eyes were so big on her face it would have been comic if Jessica wasn’t in so much pain. “Feel what?”

“The cat sense shit, whatever you call it.”

Trish shook her head. “I don’t think so.”

Jess nodded. “Because it didn’t happen. You have to trust me on this. You have to go after Laney before she finds the cops.” She coughed again. More blood spilled out of the hole in her abdomen. “Get the syringe in my pocket.”

“I’m not leaving you here!”

“Yes, you are.” _Goddamnit_. Fuck guns and everyone who consciously chooses to use them. “You have to. If we lose her, it’s over. You have to go, now!”

Trish’s cheeks were wet. It made Jessica’s guts twist in her wounded stomach. “I can’t lose you, Jess.”

And for some ungodly reason, hearing that hurt more than the shot and the bleeding.

She swallowed. “Go.” Trish lingered, her hands under Jessica’s head. “Goddamnit, _go_!”

She did. She hesitated, but she did.

 

 

* * *

 

 

An annoying fact about Laney’s powers: they make you believe what you see it real but it doesn’t _make_ it real. It’s just real in your head, for as long as she can keep her powers running. Therefore, Jessica _wasn’t_ dying. Not really. But her brain still believed she _was_ . Reason why she was lying on the floor with her arms wrapped around her middle, compressing a wound she knew wasn’t there, except it _was_ , momentarily.

And it fucking _hurt_ . She would never complain about menstrual cramps again after this. (She _would_. But less.)

“Jessica?” said someone and Jessica opened her eyes, spotting… a half-covered face and a ridiculous suit in front of her. Maybe she _had_ died and gone to hell, after all.

“What are you doing here?” she managed out, her voice annoyingly weak.

Murdock tipped his head to one side. Then to the other. “What happened?”

“Let me rephrase that,” Jess said, ignoring the taste of fake blood in her mouth. “How the hell did you get past the barricade of cops outside?”

His lips twitched once. “I’m not their enemy. Not tonight.”

Which essentially meant Misty had let him pass.

“You’re hurt…?” The statement was half a question and— _Jesus_ just how powerful were these hallucinations?

Jess cleared her throat. “No.” Then, “Kind of.”

“Your body is acting like you’re hurt… but I can’t locate the injury.”

She breathed. “She makes you see shit.”

He nodded so briskly Jessica almost missed it. “Jessica.”

“What?”

“Mattie is alive.”

Jessica relaxed all of a sudden, despite the bleeding and the all-consuming anguish. “Did you find the other kids? All of them?”

“Yes. They're safe. There was a guard. He called the cops.”

Jessica’s eyebrows went up. “Of his own free will?”

Murdock’s lips twitched again. “It took a little convincing.”

“Of course.”

From somewhere in the warehouse, Jessica heard a shot.

“Tell me you didn’t hear that.”

He cocked his head again. “Hear what?” Good. It was Laney's dark magic only. Murdock listened harder. “The basement. Your friend is in there.”

“Yeah. With Psycho Maniac number 10. She's responsible for all this shit. The maniac not Trish.”

“I’m going in.”

That was the last thing Jessica heard before her vision became dark.

 

 

* * *

 

 

During those first few seconds in which Jessica was unable to move after waking up, she noticed two things: her goddam head felt as though it had been put through a blender, and the place she was in still smelled like hospitals. It also _sounded_ like hospitals; beeping machines, the quiet shuffling of foot against the linoleum floor, and the muffled chatting of the clerks at the reception.

That alone was more than enough to make her chest constrict and her eyes snap open, plus the fact that she really hated hospitals and anything to do with them.

Her eyes found the white door first, then the white walls, and the white sheets, and the white covers. The IV in her veins was the next thing she noticed, and then proceeded to snatch it out (blood erupted from her flesh and she wondered if she should do something about it). Jess also wasn’t a big fan of the fact that she was completely naked under the hospital gown. Like, literally. Even her underwear had been removed for some goddamn reason.

(In her head, for a fraction of a second, a flash...

_‘Welcome back. By the way, your whole family is dead.’_

_‘Don’t worry, Jessie. Patsy is gonna save you.’)_

“Oh, you’re awake,” said Trish, swinging the door open. She was holding a cup of coffee. The ones made of recycled paper with some fancy logo on it, because of course she wouldn’t drink anything from the vending machine. She liked decaf with organic sugar, because she was obnoxious like that.

“What am I doing here?” Her voice broke a little at the end, and Jessica cleared her throat.

Trish looked at Jessica’s arm, then at the intravenous drip. “Did you… pull out the IV?”

“What happened to Laney?” _That_ was a much more serious problem.

She blinked. “God you really blacked out last night, didn’t you?”

Jessica rolled her eyes, pushing herself up on the bed. “As is evident by the fact that I can't remember how I got here.”

Trish sighed, plopping down on the accent chair by Jessica’s bed, and— Jesus, an _accent chair_ , not a regular metal chair that was uncomfortable as hell to sit on. The thing was basically a couch, and what in the fuck was Jessica _doing_ here?

“Well, Daredevil showed up.” A smirk spread across Trish’s lips and Jess resisted the urge to roll her eyes again only because her head was killing her.

“Yeah, I was there for _that_ part.”

Trish nodded, tucking her hair behind her ear. Her hair was down again, and she wore a red coat with white trousers and heels and a pink lipstick. She looked like herself for the first time since this whole shit had started and… honestly, it was kind of great.

“Turns out Laney can't make you have more than one hallucination at once. She couldn't make me see anything else because she wanted us to believe you were bleeding out. If she used her powers on me again you'd stop bleeding.”

Jess’s eyebrows twitched. “Well, now I kind of wish she would have.”

“Long story short; I managed to sedate her while Daredevil fought her. The cops arrived to take her and we called an ambulance for you.”

“Wait, what. _Why_? I wasn't even hurt.” Not really, anyway.

Trish pursed her lips. The kind of expression that always triggered Jessica’s gut reaction to snap or say something stupid or both. “You _were_ tough,” Trish stressed. “You were exhausted, Jess. Like, literally showing symptoms of sleep deprivation _and_ dehydration. Turns out drinking too much distilled drinks without ingesting enough water can be quite damaging... even for you.”

Well, that was… nothing Jessica wanted to hear.

She opened her mouth. Shut it again. Said, “Thanks. Notes taken. Then what, they sedated me?”

“They put you on IV and let you rest.” Her voice dropped an octave as she added, “Which you needed.”

Jess sucked her teeth. “Mission accomplished. Can I go now?”

Trish didn’t take the hint, didn’t stop speaking, because some things never change. “You need to take care of yourself sometimes, Jess. Even you can break.”

“Which has been proven time and time again in many different ways.”

Trish chuckled, placing her cup of coffee on the bedside table and standing up. “I'll go get the nurse.” She stopped at the door, glancing at Jess.

“What?”

“You scared the hell out of me.”

Jess said nothing, just watched the door open and close behind Trish.

Then she threw her legs off the bed and sat up, searching for her clothes because she _was_ not going to wait around for a doctor to release her.

She heard the door swing open again, except this time it was Margo, in all her fancy glory. She looked better. Generally better. Like healthier and shit. No bags under her eyes and a smile on her red lips.

“Hey,” she said timidly, letting the door close. “Sorry to bother you, I know you’re recovering…” _Recovering_. Christ. Jess wanted to roll her eyes again.

“Hey. What are you doing here?”

“Uh, Mattie,” she explained, pointing her thumb in the general direction of the hallway. “She’s in a room on this same floor.”

Jessica remembered Murdock saying that Mattie was alive the night before, but a rush of relief still washed over her anyway. “How is she doing?”

“She’s… getting better now.” Margo smiled faintly, but her eyes were sparkling. “They’re waiting for the drug to leave her body. She’s sedated, at the moment, because the process is painful. But she’s gonna be alright.”

Something pinched Jessica in the chest. “Good. That’s good.”

Margo smiled again, wider this time, and sucked her bottom lip between her lip. “Anyway, I came here to thank you for everything you’ve done for Mattie. For not giving up on finding her. She’s alive because of you.”

There was a time when hearing something like that would have made Jessica nauseous, like her body was physically rejecting the words, tearing them out like cancer, until she was retching in her bathroom at three in the morning thinking of all the times she had failed and all the mistakes she couldn’t fix.

Right now, she swallowed back the rejection and allowed something like acceptance to settle in the pit of her stomach. “I… had help.”

Margo shook her head. “Doesn’t matter. I came to you and you helped us. So thank you.” She made to leave, then turned back around to say, “Oh, and your friend? She was worried sick about you. Wouldn’t leave your bedside.” A pause. “You’re very lucky to have each other.”

For some ungodly reason (Jess knew the reason, she freaking knew it, but she would bite her hand off before she admitted it), she sunk back into her bed and waited for Trish to come back with the nurse.

 

 

* * *

 

 

“I still think you should have stayed there a little longer,” Trish commented as they drove back to Jessica’s apartment at some time past seven in the evening.

“I slept for 14 hours. I think I'm good.”

Trish pulled over, parking outside of Jessica’s building. “Your body went through the whole process of... you know…”

Jess tapped her fingers on the seatbelt. “Dying. Yeah, I remember.”

“That must be tiring.”

Jess sighed, unbuckling her seatbelt. “This conversation is more tiring. You coming to get your crap out of my apartment?”

It took Trish a moment to reply. “Oh, yeah. I forgot I left my stuff here.”

Trish followed her to the elevator, Jess walking a few steps ahead of her. When the doors slid closed, Trish chuckled low in her throat, smoothing some invisible wrinkles on her coat.

“What?” Jess asked, frowning.

Trish shook her head, a crease appearing between her eyebrows. “It feels so weird. To do all _that_ and come back to _this_. It feels... oddly ordinary.”

Jess pushed the air out through her nose. “Now imagine if you had listened to me the first time I said that.” The assclown had the nerve to laugh.

Trish was in the process of stuffing her spandex and gym clothes into her bag, while Jessica poured herself some whiskey (she pretended not to notice the reproachful look Trish sent her way the second she touched the half-empty bottle of booze, like she could make the thing disappear with just a glare), when someone knocked on her door. Jess took a sip—because it had been a long week and she freaking needed it—before going to answer it.

Unsurprisingly, Malcolm was standing on the other side. His clothes were back to normal; jeans and a T-shirt, and his eyes were honest. “Hey.”

“Hey.”

“Trish told me you were leaving the hospital today, so I decided to stop by,” he offered, and Jessica found it quite infuriating how everything inside her refused to hold a grudge against Malcolm after their previous talk. “I brought pizza.” He lifted the pizza box in his hand for emphasis.

Jess clicked her tongue. “Did you get us anything to drink?”

Malcolm smiled. It was very open and honest and it made her stomach flutter in a way that didn't bother her.

“Coke.”

Jess answered by pulling the door all the way open.

“Glad to know you're both okay,” he said as he walked past Trish. Jess kind of truly enjoyed the way Trish uneasily rubbed the back of her neck.

“Me too.” Her reply was accompanied by a tiny smile and Jessica lifted an eyebrow.

“So I guess you're both over the sexual tension and all.”

Trish literally choked on her spit but Malcolm, surprisingly, just shook his head and laughed low in his throat.

“Yeah,” he said, entering her kitchen to fetch some plates Jess didn't even know she had in her cabinets. But then again, several things she was sure sure she didn't own had appeared in her apartment during the time Malcolm had worked with her, so it was whatever. “What about you two?” he asked when he returned to her office, plates in hand.

“ _What_ about us?” Jess asked. The table in her kitchen only had one chair, so Malcolm set the plates down on her desk instead, like he lived here, like he had never left.

“You did a great job with the Hayness case.” And something about the way he said that reminded her of the way Vido looked at her every night when she returned from a case.   

Which reminded her she should probably let Oscar know she wasn't dead.

“Thank you,” Trish said at the same time Jessica said, “Just set the table Malcolm,” and pulled her phone out of her back pocket to send Oscar a quick _‘I'm back’_. And she knew she should have called instead, but she also knew he would understand why she didn’t.

“So what now?” continued Malcolm as if Jess hadn't said a damn thing. “Are you going to work together again? Solving cases?”

Trish opened her mouth. Glanced at Jessica. Then said, “Maybe.”

For once, Jessica’s brain didn’t immediately ban the idea.

 _‘We’ve missed you. I will drop Vido off at Sonia’s and stop by later’_ , came Oscar’s reply as Malcolm and Trish chatted amusedly in the background.

And then they were all sitting around the desk, passing the pizza around like this was a normal thing that Jessica could have, like she had what it took to nourish moments like this and keep them, like she could ever hold something close without eventually breaking it. But tonight, like almost every night for the past few months, she allowed herself to believe she could. She allowed herself to believe this was a step towards _okay_.

Even if it wasn’t true, that was a lie she could live with.

 

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> English is not my first language so I apologize for any mistakes that I didn't notice.


End file.
